ImpactWatch

One of the main features of ImpactWatch is the ability to track how positively or negatively your company or product is being portrayed in online media.  You can also track this portrayal for individual products or your competitors and their products.  In addition, all of this information can be summarized in a neat little graph under the “analytics” section.But how does the positive and negative system work?  After all, can a computer actually scan an article for words and key phrases and decide whether or not it’s overly positive or negative?  Possibly, but living in a world dominated by sarcasm and metaphors, I have my doubts that the results would be altogether accurate.  This is especially true for blog entries since they tend to be voiced by opinionated authors writing specifically to be snarky and opinionated.  An automated (i.e. non-human) sentiment rating system would certainly not work for those.  Only a human being can detect the subtleness of sardonic wit.

No, the answer to the debate between positivism and negativism is a human rater.  This rater reviews the article and marks which way it leans, as well as which indicators and specifications were reviewed within the article.  This person reads many articles in the same category and knows, from comparison, which ones are positive and which ones are negative.  Doing this greatly decreases the degree of subjectivity.  In addition, articles can be related as “neutral”.  This designation is saved for those articles that mention the company or product but do not necessarily serve to review it.  We can even delve further into these ratings by using a five-point scale (from ‘very positive’ to ‘very negative’), which I actually prefer, but then again, I’m a sucker for details.

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