Predicting ratings of social media feeds: combining latent-factors and emotional aspects for improving performance of different classifiers

Purpose: The widespread acceptance of various social platforms has increased the number of users posting about various services based on their experiences about the services. Finding out the intended ratings of social media (SM) posts is important for both organizations and prospective users since these posts can help in capturing the user’s perspectives. However, unlike merchant websites, the SM posts related to the service-experience cannot be rated unless explicitly mentioned in the comments. Additionally, predicting ratings can also help to build a database using recent comments for testing recommender algorithms in various scenarios. Design/methodology/approach: In this study, the authors have predicted the ratings of SM posts using linear (Naïve Bayes, max-entropy) and non-linear (k-nearest neighbor, k-NN) classifiers utilizing combinations of different features, sentiment scores and emotion scores. Findings: Overall, the results of this study reveal that the non-linear classifier (k-NN classifier) performed better than the linear classifiers (Naïve Bayes, Max-entropy classifier). Results also show an improvement of performance where the classifier was combined with sentiment and emotion scores. Introduction of the feature “factors of importance” or “the latent factors” also show an improvement of the classifier performance. Originality/value: This study provides a new avenue of predicting ratings of SM feeds by the use of machine learning algorithms along with a combination of different features like emotional aspects and latent factors.