Analysis of Airline Sentiment Data: Does the social media image reflect real performance?

Abstract

With the development of social media, increasingly more people express their feelings on social media (such as Twitter), which are a useful source of information e.g. for the airline companies which want to find out what causes negative sentiment about them and try to improve the communicated weaknesses. This paper aims to find out the variation in sentiment towards different airlines and check whether the Twitter perception of airlines reflects their “real” performances. The result suggests that Delta and Southwest airlines have a relatively good reputation, while US Airways has a bad reputation. By examining the reasons for negative sentiment, we find that Twitter ranking reflects the "real" ranking based on the Department of Transportation data closely for mishandled luggage and canceled flights, but considerably less closely for delayed flights. This demonstrates that Twitter can provide a good reflection of reality, but this is not always the case.