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 online application that the ACFB Advocacy team can use to inform their communication to relevant stakeholders.

KEYWORDS:

• Data analysis
• data mining
• data visualization
• geographic information studies
• information communication technology

Acknowledgement

We thank our Food Bank partners Lauren Waits, Director of Government Affairs; Allison Young, Marketing Manager; and Jocelyn Leitch, Data and Insights Analyst; for educating us about food policy, food insecurity in Atlanta and across the nation, and the work of the Atlanta Community Food Bank.

Finally, we would like to thank the staff and students participating in the Data Science for Social Good–Atlanta program for their support and assistance.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported and funded by National Science Foundation, South Big Data Hub, and LexisNexis.