Sentiment Analysis of UAE Social Media: Some Philosophical Issues

Researchers working on sentiment analysis of Arab social media admit that many modern sentiment analysis tools do not accommodate linguistic particularities of Arabic language and propose technical solutions to these issues. In this work in progress, we argue that, in addition to dealing with linguistic particularities of Arabic, researchers interested in sentiment analysis of UAE social media need to address deeper cultural, philosophical, and legal issues. The practical goal of this research project is to empirically investigate usefulness of sentiment analysis tools in the UAE social media context for both researchers and practitioners.