“Uncovering Responses”: A Sentiment Analysis Approach to Racial Violence Among Black Parents in Missouri

This study investigates the emotional responses of Black parents in Missouri to racial violence, revealing three distinct types of emotional responses: negative emotions (feelings that induce distress or discomfort), neutral emotions (feelings that are neither positive nor negative), and positive emotions (feelings that induce joy or satisfaction). We explored a range of emotions expressed by parents using the Multiple Affect Adjective Checklist (MAACL-R) for self-reported emotions and the Valence Aware Dictionary sEntiment Reasoner (VADER) for sentiment analysis. The findings indicate that factors such as desensitization to racialized violence, trauma-related coping mechanisms, political or ideological beliefs, and racial identity beliefs may contribute to the range of emotional responses. Additionally, the use of VADER in the sentiment analysis highlighted the complexities of Black parents’ emotional responses amidst the context of racial violence. Our findings reveal the complexity of these emotional responses, especially the unexpected presence of positive emotions. This study uniquely contributes to the literature by expanding the application of sentiment analysis in public health research offering a detailed examination of the nuance emotional landscape of Black parents in Missouri.