ABSTRACT

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1. 1. Background of the Study

Using online platforms and social media for political discourse is becoming a common practice, especially around election times. One interesting aspect of this trend is the possibility of pulsing the public’s opinion about the candidates and the outcome of the elections, and that has attracted the interest of many researchers and the press, For example the success in the US Presidential campaign of Barak Obama was established on social network as an integral part of the political camping toolbox. (Tumasjan et al., 2010).

What others think, has always been an important piece of information for many during the decision making process. Long before awareness of the World Wide Web became widespread, many of asked their friends to recommend an auto-mechanic or to explain who they were planning to vote for in local elections, requested reference letters regarding job applicants from colleagues, or consulted consumer reports to decide what dishwasher to buy. But the Internet and the Web have now (among other things) made it possible to find out about the opinions and experiences of those in the vast pool of people that are neither our personal acquaintances nor well known professional critics, that is, people we have never heard of. Conversely, more and more people are making their opinions available to strangers via the Internet (Horrigan, 2008).

Social media has received much attention due to its real-time and interactive nature for political discourse, especially around election times. Recently studies have explored the power of social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook, on recording current social trends and predicting the voting outcomes of an area. These social media generate a large amount of raw data that can be used in decision making for election predictions. This tremendously generated data is referred to as “Big data”. After scrutinized a lot of research work related to election prediction, a survey paper is presented in which every work related to election prediction using social media is incorporated. This research is an attempt to review various tools, models, and algorithms used for the observation of masses online campaign discussion and analysis of Candidates in elections, and also suggest further tools and techniques for improvement. Sentiment analysis or Data Mining is the automated mining of attitudes, opinions, and emotions from text, speech, and database sources. Sentiment analysis involves classifying opinions in text into categories like “positive” or “negative” or “neutral”, this research is going to use data mining algorithm for masses opinion review and classification (Abdul et al, 2018).

1.2     Statement of the Problem

The inability of individuals, political party members, cooperate bodies and political parties to get a consensus, general view or perspective on the opinion of the masses with regards to contesting candidates in electoral matters has been an issue of great concern, as many, especially contesting candidates resort to getting feedbacks from their campaign managers to know the opinion of the masses with regards their personalities, which in most cases are not accurate and sometimes lies..  

This deficiency has marred and disrupted the chances of getting a clear opinion of the society due to inaccurate sources, however with implementation of this system, a more consensus and accurate method of getting the masses opinion with regards to political candidates will be achieved by using data mining on masses reviews in an online forum.

1.3     Aim and Objectives of the Study

The aim of this research work is to Design and Implement a Political Candidate Masses Opinion Review and Analysis System using data mining on masses comment reviews to evaluate or analyzed a political candidate based on the sentiments or opinions reviews of the masses.

The specific objectives includes:

i.        To review related literatures pointing to political candidate masses opinion review and analysis system using data mining.

ii.       Design a political candidate masses opinion review and analysis system using UML controls.

iii.      Create a database for the system using MySQL database.

iv.      Implement the system designed in (ii) using HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP on the server side.

v.       Test the system implemented in (iv) above for performance.

1.4     Significance of the Study

This study will serve as an avenue for political candidates, the society and researchers to get a consensus analysis of the opinion of masses with regards political candidates in times of election.

The software is also relevant in the following ways:

i.        It will aid in carrying out candidates ratings based on masses opinion reviews.

ii.       It will be useful to political candidate to know the opinion of the masses with regards to their personality.

iii.      It will also be relevant to any individual or agency which will like to carry out a survey on the opinion of the masses with regards specific political candidates.

1.5     Scope of the Study

This research work covers the development of apolitical candidate masses opinion review and analysis using data mining, with special focus to the Nigerian Association of Computer Science Students (NACOSS) election, Nigerian Army College of Environmental Science and Technology(NACEST) chapter.

1.6   Limitation of the Study

The researcher faced some limitations during the course of this research. Some of this limitations/constraint includes;

i.        Time constraint: Time factor was the major factors as the timeframe to submit the project was too short for a rigorous research.

ii.       Financial constraint:  Lack of adequate finance to fund the researcher as to the purchase of data to review related works online was another major setback.

1.7     Definition of Terms

i.        Candidate: is the prospective recipient of an award or honor, or a person seeking or being considered for some kind of position; for example: to be elected to an office.

ii.       Comment: An observation or remark expressing an opinion or attitude

3. Debugger: A debugger is a computer program used by programmers to test and debug a target program. Debuggers may use instruction-set simulators, rather than running a program directly on the processor to achieve a higher level of control over its execution.

iv.      Decision-Making: The action or process of making choice.

5. Electronic: (of a device) having or operating with components such as microchips and transistors that control and direct electric currents.
6. Evaluation: This is a systematic determination of a subject's merit, worth and significance, using criteria governed by a set of standards.
7. Feedback: Information about reactions to a product, a person's performance of a task, etc. which is used as a basis for improvement.
8. Fraudster: A person who commits fraud, especially in business dealings.
9. Fraudulent: Obtained, done by, or involving deception, especially criminal deception.
10. Genuine: The state of a matter being truly what it is said to be or being authentic.
11. Internet: Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is also known as the network of networks.
12. iOS: iOS is a mobile operating system developed by Apple. It was originally named the iPhone OS, but was renamed to the iOS in June, 2009.
13. Mass: A large number of people or objects crowded together.
14. Online Shopping: Is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser.
15. Opinion Mining: This is a type of natural language processing for tracking the mood of the public about a particular entity or product. Opinion mining, which is also called sentiment analysis, involves building a system to collect and categorize opinions about a product or services.
16. Opinion: An opinion can be defined as a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular thing which can either be communicated orally or in written words.
17. Patronize: To frequently make purchase or request a service in a shop, restaurant, or other establishment as a customer.
18. Politics: is the set of activities that are associated with the governance of a country, state or area. It involves making decisions that apply to groups of members and achieving and exercising positions of governance—organized control over a human community.
19. Society: is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations.
20. System: A system is a set of detailed methods, procedures and routines created to carry out a specific activity, perform a duty, or solve a problem.