Opinion mining in sociopolitical research

The objective of this study was to explore the potential of the opinion mining methodology in sociopolitical research, its techniques, and applications from the field of reflexivity. It is a non-experimental and exploratory study. It concludes that advances in the field of artificial intelligence have provided the sociopolitical sciences with tools that make it possible to approach the dominant trends of opinion in society during specific junctures where decision-making and/or the positioning of an idea, public policy, or social project can be measured in real-time, with broad demographic scopes that can be segmented, bringing the researcher closer to the subject of study with minimum levels of bias. Opinion mining research continues to be dominated by electoral and marketing topics; however, there are potentialities in the research of public policies, social programs, democracy, and governance that are still waiting for the application of opinion mining as a sociopolitical research methodology.