Title: Food for Thought: Analyzing Public Opinion on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,
Abstract: This project explores public opinion on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program (SNAP) in news and social media outlets, and tracks elected
representatives' voting records on issues relating to SNAP and food insecurity.
We used machine learning, sentiment analysis, and text mining to analyze
national and state level coverage of SNAP in order to gauge perceptions of the
program over time across these outlets. Results indicate that the majority of
news coverage has negative sentiment, more partisan news outlets have more
extreme sentiment, and that clustering of negative reporting on SNAP occurs in
the Midwest. Our final results and tools will be displayed in an on-line
application that the ACFB Advocacy team can use to inform their communication
to relevant stakeholders.