Sentiment & emotion analysis
ForumScout analyzes the sentiment and emotional tone of every mention. This helps you understand not just what people are saying, but how they feel about it.
Sentiment classification
Every mention is classified as Positive, Neutral, or Negative. This is available on all paid plans.
You can filter your feed by sentiment to focus on specific types of mentions. For example, filter to negative posts to catch complaints early, or positive posts to find testimonials and advocates.
Sentiment in scouts
When creating or editing a scout, you can set a sentiment filter to only collect posts matching specific sentiments. For example, a scout that only collects negative mentions of your brand.
Emotion analysis
On Pro and Ultra plans, ForumScout goes deeper with emotion analysis using the Plutchik emotion model. Each mention is analyzed for eight core emotions:
| Emotion | Signals |
|---|---|
| Joy | Happiness, satisfaction, delight |
| Trust | Confidence, reliability, loyalty |
| Fear | Anxiety, concern, worry |
| Surprise | Unexpected reactions, shock |
| Sadness | Disappointment, loss, regret |
| Anger | Frustration, hostility, outrage |
| Anticipation | Excitement, expectation, interest |
| Disgust | Disapproval, aversion, rejection |
Each post gets an emotion breakdown showing which emotions are present and how intense they are on a 1-10 scale.
AI mention sorting
On Pro and Ultra plans, mentions are also automatically categorized using AI. Default categories include:
- Buyer intent — Posts showing interest in purchasing or comparing products
- Bug reports — Posts reporting technical issues or errors
- Feature requests — Posts asking for new features or improvements
- Sarcasm & satire — Posts using humor or irony
- Promotional posts — Posts promoting products or services
- Hiring — Job-related posts
ForumScout dynamically creates new categories as it encounters posts that don't fit existing ones. You can filter your feed by these categories.
Viewing sentiment data
In the feed
Each post card shows its sentiment classification. On Pro/Ultra plans, you can also see the emotion breakdown for individual posts.
In Insights
The Sentiment tab in Insights provides aggregated sentiment analytics:
- Sentiment score trends over time
- Dominant emotion identification
- Emotional intensity tracking
- Emotion trend charts
- Most negative mentions
See Insights & analytics for more details.
Tips
- Don't just count sentiment — look at emotions — A spike in "anger" requires a different response than a spike in "sadness". Anger might mean a bug or outage; sadness might mean people are leaving.
- Use sentiment filters on scouts strategically — A scout that only captures negative competitor mentions is a powerful sales tool.
- Watch for emotion intensity changes — A mention with 9/10 anger intensity is very different from 3/10. High-intensity negative emotions often signal urgent issues.
- Use AI categories to prioritize — Filter to "buyer intent" posts first if lead generation is your primary goal.