Social Media Discourse and Genetically Modified Organisms

Abstract

The objective of this research was to analyze themes of the Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) debate to investigate if sentiment could be segregated by geography, and in the GMO debate contest, to recognize how individuals interact with each other to form online  connections. In all datasets, sentiment surrounding GMOs was negative. Via Netlytic (a cloud-based social media and networks analyzer) Twitter data was collected in real time. Dataset collection periods ranged between 6 to twelve days in continuous segments from November 2013 to February 2014.  During this period, significant anti-GMO interactions were formed within networks, reinforcing the importance of social media in issue analysis.