Can the EU's Sensei project predict Brexit by data-mining social media chatter?
Summary
The Sensei project, backed by the European Commission, is analyzing millions of online conversations to predict events, such as Brexit: the UK vote on whether to retain its EU membership. Websays founder, Dr Hugo Zaragoza, said in a statement (PDF): "There are others out there listening to social media, but we are the only ones with this deep combination of technology and human analysis through machine learning. As one of the project members - Professor Massimo Poesio, from the University of Essex - says: "The recent UK general election illustrated just how wrong traditional pollsters can be." Senseis graphical "radar chart" shows that the dominant UK sentiment, based on 1.5 million posts, is indignation, followed by amusement. Sensei is a Japanese honorific given to masters of particular arts, and is typically used to address teachers, professors, doctors, lawyers etc, as well as writers and musicians.
