Bridging the Gap between Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of Opinion Forums

An increasing number of users of opinion forums provide us with rich sources of data about customer opinions. Several fields of research deal with the analysis of qualitative or quantitative data. While affective text mining research explores qualitative data, social network analysis focuses on quantitative mining methods. A combined analysis of both information classes is still missing. However, this combined analysis is necessary for identifying the process of opinion formation in opinion forums. In this paper, we attempt to bridge this gap by applying new methods which are required for network analysis of opinion forum data. We are also presenting a plug-in for the popular biological research tool Cytoscape. This plug-in combined with visualization features of Cytoscape implements the key features described in this paper. Our approach will provide companies with information about chances and risks concerning their products.