Metaverse-related perceptions and sentiments on Twitter: evidence from text mining and network analysis

The concept of the metaverse promises a cyber-social platform, a virtual space offering a new reality, new collaboration, and communication opportunities. Despite its growing popularity and anticipation that it is the next big thing, there is a research gap regarding metaverse-related perceptions and sentiments. We aim to bridge this gap by taking a computational perspective to uncover the metaverse-related sentiments and perceptions on Twitter. Two million tweets shared in 2021 were examined using a combination of sentiment, text, and network analysis to classify tweets and words into sentiment categories, gather frequently used phrases, and detect central words and hashtags, respectively. The findings revealed that positive sentiments and emotions (anticipation, trust, joy) are prevalent in the tweets. The prevalence of three clusters in tweets, blockchain, gaming, and virtual reality, indicates that the concept of the metaverse is perceived as interrelated and integrated with finance, entertainment, and technology.