Beneath the Tip of the Iceberg: Current Challenges and New Directions in Sentiment Analysis Research
It identifies key challenges and new directions for researchers and practitioners in sentiment analysis, which is incremental as it builds on existing work rather than introducing a novel method.
The paper addresses the perception that sentiment analysis has reached maturity by highlighting its shortcomings and under-explored aspects necessary for true sentiment understanding, while analyzing past advancements and proposing future research directions.
Sentiment analysis as a field has come a long way since it was first introduced as a task nearly 20 years ago. It has widespread commercial applications in various domains like marketing, risk management, market research, and politics, to name a few. Given its saturation in specific subtasks -- such as sentiment polarity classification -- and datasets, there is an underlying perception that this field has reached its maturity. In this article, we discuss this perception by pointing out the shortcomings and under-explored, yet key aspects of this field that are necessary to attain true sentiment understanding. We analyze the significant leaps responsible for its current relevance. Further, we attempt to chart a possible course for this field that covers many overlooked and unanswered questions.