Targeted Sentiment Analysis: A Data-Driven Categorization

Abstract: Targeted sentiment analysis (TSA), also known as aspect based sentiment analysis (ABSA), aims at detecting fine-grained sentiment polarity towards targets in a given opinion document. Due to the lack of labeled datasets and effective technology, TSA had been intractable for many years. The newly released datasets and the rapid development of deep learning technologies are key enablers for the recent significant progress made in this area. However, the TSA tasks have been defined in various ways with different understandings towards basic concepts like target' andaspect'. In this paper, we categorize the different tasks and highlight the differences in the available datasets and their specific tasks. We then further discuss the challenges related to data collection and data annotation which are overlooked in many previous studies.