As the world is moving into a symbiotic state with technology, specifically with their handheld devices, there is much buzz around ‘Big Data’ as a means to understanding societies and individuals. However, there is an important hurdle, algorithms must face in order to begin decoding our condition – the complexities of the human language.
Originating across the globe, our language constantly evolves to carry culture, tradition, sentiment and overall sentiment at a given time. The traditional analysis uses simple word clouds that divide text content through elementary rubrics such as positive/negative words, frequency tags. Nonetheless, in a society where sarcastic memes surf large waves of the internet, it is crucial for big data analysis tool to stop comprehending like a detached machine and view text like a human would.
So, where do we go from here…
The Birth of NLP (Natural Language Processing)
Natural language processing (NLP), a component of artificial intelligence, is the ability of a computer program to understand human speech as it is spoken.
The development of NLP applications takes on bigger challenges as computers traditionally require humans to “speak” to them in a programming language that is precise, unambiguous and highly structured or, perhaps through a limited number of clearly enunciated voice commands. In contrast, Human speech is not always precise — it is often ambiguous and the linguistic structure can depend on many complex variables, including slang, regional dialects, and social context.
Hm, only if there was an example of how this can be used in business…
Leveraging of the Concept Cloud for an Influencer
The excerpt below is a Concept cloud that has been plucked from a report created for Sugar Sammy, a Canadian comedian, actor, writer and producer from Montreal who conducts his routines through a mixture of fluent English, French, Punjabi, and Hindi.
This analysis poised Sugar Sammy in a better position to pick his events, content material and the correct means to connect with his fans, as it provided him insights on how his fans were reacting to his performances.
Fans are engaged and want to praise Sugar Sammy online and the death threats seem to drive negative sentiment. Moreover, there is a connection made with Montreal Canadiens that has had a significant impact on Sugar Sammy’s brand identity as well.
A legitimate data-driven approach, that surpasses the human linguistic complexities, allows brands, be it large consumer product goods organizations or individual influencers, to understand the real conversations that their audience are having. This allows them to connect directly to their audience while reducing inefficient decision making on the content/project roll out, thus helping their overall return on investment.
An extremely small cohort of companies, such as Semeon Analytics, focus all its efforts on research and development of the NLP technology through its product and services. Please feel free to comment below, or reach out if any of this work interests you!
Source:
http://searchcontentmanagement.techtarget.com/definition/natural-language-processing-NLP
