No Sentiment is an Island: Sentiment Classification on Medical Forums

摘要

In this study we propose a new method to classify sentiments in messages posted on online forums. Traditionally, sentiment classification relies on analysis of emotionally-charged words and discourse units found in the classified text. In coherent online discussions, however, messages' non-lexical meta-information can be sufficient to achieve reliable classification results. Our empirical evidence is obtained through multi-class classification of messages posted on a medical forum.