Unlocking Public Opinion: How Mixed Media Can Boost Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment analysis is crucial for understanding what people think and feel. With social media booming, it's more important than ever to get this right. However, mixing different types of media like text and images can cause problems. The differences in how these media types are understood can lead to errors in analysis. This is where a new approach called Semantic Enhancement and Cross-Modal Interaction Fusion (SECIF) comes in. It aims to tackle these issues head-on. First, SECIF uses advanced tools to pull out important details from text and images. Then, it introduces a clever way to combine these details, reducing the noise and focusing on what's truly important. This is done through a mechanism designed to highlight key information and minimize distractions. Next, a special module is created to understand complex relationships within the text, making the text features even more powerful. Finally, a fusion module is implemented. In this setup, text features take the lead, while image features play a supporting role. This allows for a deep integration of both types of features. The model's performance is fine-tuned using a combination of different loss functions. This means it learns to make fewer mistakes over time. To test its effectiveness, experiments were conducted using data from a popular social media platform. The results were impressive. SECIF outperformed other models, showing significant improvements in accuracy. When compared to text-only, image-only, and multimodal models, SECIF showed notable gains. This suggests that combining different types of media can indeed enhance sentiment analysis. Moreover, SECIF was tested against ten other models using publicly available datasets. The results were consistent, showing improvements in both accuracy and a key measure called the F1 score. This means the model is not only more accurate but also better at balancing precision and recall. This is a big deal because it means governments and organizations can get a clearer picture of public emotions and trends. With better insights, they can make more informed decisions and create more effective strategies. However, it's important to note that while SECIF shows promise, it's not a perfect solution. The challenges of multimodal sentiment analysis are complex and ever-evolving. As social media continues to grow and change, so too will the tools needed to understand it. This is an ongoing process, and SECIF is just one step in that journey.