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<p>In recent years, commercial entities have increased their efforts in space. As the divide between traditional government and private entities’ involvement in space continues to&#xa0;grow, public opinion data measuring differences in perceptions between commercial, public–private partnership, and government space missions remain limited. This study addressed this gap by using dictionary-based sentiment analysis on 553,659 posts on X (formerly known as Twitter) to examine how perceptions of commercial missions and a SpaceX public–private partnership compared to NASA’s mission. Initial results indicateded that the Blue Origin New Shepard Rocket, Virgin Galactic VSS Unity Rocket, and SpaceX Dragon 2 missions, along with the general topic of a billionaire space race, elicited more negative sentiments compared to NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover mission. After editing the sentiment dictionary to account&#xa0;for contextual language, these results became more consistent across observed groups and demonstrated better model fit, with NASA still being viewed more positively compared to its commercial counterparts. Additionally, emoji conversion to text form affected the intensity of some sentiment values, though this impact was less pronounced than contextual dictionary edits. Overall, this study highlights the importance of sentiment attribution edits to contextual words when using dictionary-based sentiment analysis to assess public opinion.</p>

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Astro-nots Bezos, Branson, and Musk compared to NASA: promises and pitfalls of using sentiment analysis to assess differences between commercial, government, and public–private space missions

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年7月2日

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  • Cheyenne A. Black

摘要

In recent years, commercial entities have increased their efforts in space. As the divide between traditional government and private entities’ involvement in space continues to grow, public opinion data measuring differences in perceptions between commercial, public–private partnership, and government space missions remain limited. This study addressed this gap by using dictionary-based sentiment analysis on 553,659 posts on X (formerly known as Twitter) to examine how perceptions of commercial missions and a SpaceX public–private partnership compared to NASA’s mission. Initial results indicateded that the Blue Origin New Shepard Rocket, Virgin Galactic VSS Unity Rocket, and SpaceX Dragon 2 missions, along with the general topic of a billionaire space race, elicited more negative sentiments compared to NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover mission. After editing the sentiment dictionary to account for contextual language, these results became more consistent across observed groups and demonstrated better model fit, with NASA still being viewed more positively compared to its commercial counterparts. Additionally, emoji conversion to text form affected the intensity of some sentiment values, though this impact was less pronounced than contextual dictionary edits. Overall, this study highlights the importance of sentiment attribution edits to contextual words when using dictionary-based sentiment analysis to assess public opinion.