Project Sentiment Analysis

Cincinnati vs Chicago Sentiment Analysis - What Do The People Think?

My first question was to try and figure out if there was a difference in how people felt about their respective city over time, both in the short-term (day of the week) as well as by year. I used reviews from https://www.bestplaces.net from people who lived in either Chicago or Cincinnati. I did extract the date from each review and turn it into its own column so I was able to group my visualizations by day of the week and year. Unfortunately there wasn’t a ton of reviews, but I still think we are able to see if there are any overarching trends overtime, and if the sentiment for either of these cities has drastically changed over a few years, or even throughout the week.

Day of the Week

Oddly enough, it seems like people tend to be more positive about Cincinnati closer to the weekend (Thursday - Saturday) while people seem to be more positive about Chicago during the week. Although I truly do not think there is enough sentiment data within this analysis for Chicago, I potentially could see why this trend could be true given more data. Chicago is a bustling city during the week, with many unique and fun jobs to chase after, along with the beautiful lunch and dinner spots that one might hit throughout the week. As for Cincinnati, it can be pretty bland during the week (in my opinion), but the nightlife and events during the weekend are surprisingly fun and popular. Again, I wish there was more reviews to determine a definite pattern, but in my opinion I believe this pattern has a good chance of being true.

By the Year

It seems as though Chicago citizens have gotten more positive about their hometown over the years of these reviews, with a huge spike most recently in 2021. Although it doesn’t seem like Cincinnati has as much data for each year, it looks like Cincinnati definitely has a positive upward trend as well. I think this trend would ring true given more data, just because I think both cities have been growing exponentially and with that, growing the number of places and activities around the city. It’s no surprise that people love Chicago more than ever, but it says a lot about Cincinnati and it’s surprising growth in positivity. This definitely rings well for people wanting to stay/move to Cincinnati!!

After taking a brief look at what people thought about their respective cities, I wanted to dive a little bit deeper into what dominant emotions were expressed about living in Cincinnati versus living in Chicago. I used multiple Opinion & Editorial articles on living in Cincinnati and Chicago. Although reviews would have been nice to analyze, they were far and few between. I wanted to really dive into people’s overarching thoughts of each city. I used https://www.moverjunction.com/moving-guides/pros-and-cons-of-living-in-chicago, https://www.extraspace.com/blog/moving/city-guides/things-know-living-in-chicago/, https://thehonestlocal.com/living-chicago-illinois-moving/, https://retirepedia.com/17-pros-and-cons-of-living-in-cincinnati-ohio.html?gclid=CjwKCAiApuCrBhAuEiwA8VJ6JlGWXo10KiHwuTVKfuolyMKSynFKI9uMaqFZ2ABT6J0UdaPgQPKyUhoCiGMQAvD_BwE, https://movinmaker.com/living-in-cincinnati-pros-cons/. With combining all of these opinion articles, I felt as though I could get a solid feeling for what people really thought the pros and cons of living in each city were. I combined all of these articles into one data frame for easy access to the data. I then was able to create a few visualizations with the help of NRC Lexicon to display the emotions associated with each city.

Comparing Cincinnati and Chicago:

Surprisingly enough, it seems as though the most overwhelming emotion felt by citizens of both cities was positivity! This is surprising considering how different people can experience the same city, but nonetheless a great emotion to be associated with. Both cities are extremely close in terms of positivity. Disgust seemed to be the least relevant emotion for both cities, which is a great thing to hear when considering whether you should move to either of these cities - who would want to move to a city that evokes disgust?! Both cities also shared almost the same amount of anticipation and trust. I think trust is a great attribute of any city, trustworthy citizens, businesses, and friends are all extremely important in a city one would call home. The biggest difference between the city seems to be sadness and surprising, where Cincinnati seems to be on the higher end of both of those emotions.

The Bubble Chart:

I think this bubble chart is a very easy visualization to really see how strong each of these emotions are for each city. As you can see, the same results stand as before, but it’s much clearer how strong each sentiment is. For example, positive and negative sentiments seem to be pretty strong in both cities, indicating that there is probably a solid mix of good and bad in each city which sounds pretty realistic to me. Not everyone is going to love or hate a city, so this seems like a correct statement to make - each city’s pro’s and con’s are likely about even.

Lastly, I wanted to look into the significant differences in overall sentiment towards living in Cincinnati versus Chicago to really tie this sentiment analysis together. I took the same data used from question two (the opinion articles) and did a counted the amount of times each word was said, and rated those words either positive or negative. This was grouped by city, so we are able to see the number of times a word showed up in the articles, and whether it was positive or negative ( negative numbers indicating it was a negative word and positive numbers indicating it was a positive word).

The Results

In Chicago, the negative sentiment is predominantly captured by the word “crime,” which significantly outweighs the city’s positive sentiments like “amazing” and “easy,” with the highest negative frequency reaching 24 mentions. On the flip side, Cincinnati displays a more favorable sentiment landscape, with “affordable” leading its positive terms at 16 mentions, suggesting a perception of economic accessibility. Both cities share common positive descriptors such as “amazing,” “easy,” and “free,” indicating similar strengths in certain aspects. However, Cincinnati appears to enjoy a more positive overall sentiment, in contrast to Chicago’s considerable negative association with crime. The term “hard” emerges with negative connotations for both cities, albeit more pronounced for Chicago. This quantitative sentiment analysis implies that Cincinnati is perceived more positively, particularly regarding affordability, while Chicago’s image is kind of skewed by concerns related to crime. It’s important to note that the analysis is based solely on the frequency of word mentions, and this one visualization doesn’t necessarily sum up the overall feeling people have about an entire city.