PlaceSpeak Launches “SentiMap” for Geospatial Sentiment Analysis

VANCOUVER, BC – Today, PlaceSpeak launched the beta release of SentiMap, its text-based sentiment analysis feature. This feature is now available to Premium and Organization-Wide customers.

SentiMap represents a significant improvement over traditional methods of analyzing qualitative data (e.g. comments), which can be extremely tedious and time-consuming. In contrast to ‘word clouds’, SentiMap makes it possible to see how people’s’ attitudes differ geospatially. Consultation administrators will now be able to instantly visualize participants’ sentiments in discussion comments along a five-point scale: very positive, positive, neutral, negative, or very negative.

SentiMap is best utilized to showcase the range of public opinion along a positive to negative spectrum, e.g. “What do you think of the new public art in the city?” It is less effective for ideation-based discussions, e.g. “Where would you like to see more public art in the city?” However, questions can be reframed in order to most optimally benefit from these visualizations of public sentiment. A geospatial view provides a quick snapshot of trends and differences in public opinion across different geographical areas (e.g. neighbourhoods, cities), allowing for more nuanced analysis and policy-making.

“Transparency is a key value at PlaceSpeak. Seeing is believing, and our new SentiMap makes it possible to visualize public sentiment in real time,” says PlaceSpeak Founder and CEO, Colleen Hardwick. “This new feature will help establish greater trust in the online public consultation process, and make understandable spatial differences in public opinion.”

SentiMap can be utilized by a wide range of organizations (e.g. local government, public sector agencies, political or advocacy organizations, local media) to analyze and showcase the difference in public opinion across different geographical areas. The map visualizations make data more accessible to non-technical users and citizen participants, ultimately increasing transparency and accountability in the public engagement process.

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Contact: 

Mary Leong
Communications Manager, PlaceSpeak Inc.
Telephone: 604-336-6977
Email: [email protected]