Net sentiment

Net sentiment is a single summary score for a body of analyzed text, calculated as the share of positive mentions minus the share of negative mentions, with neutral mentions excluded from the calculation.

It is typically expressed as % positive - % negative, and depends entirely on the underlying sentiment analysis classification that labeled each piece of text as positive, negative, or neutral in the first place. This differs from a simple sentiment ratio in that net sentiment can go negative, a score below zero means negative mentions outnumber positive ones, whereas ratio-based measures cannot fall below zero.

Brand and communications teams use net sentiment, drawn from social listening data, as a compact trend line for brand health over time, similar in spirit to how a Net Promoter Score compacts a loyalty survey into one number. The main pitfall is comparing net sentiment scores across different tools or text sources without accounting for differences in how each classifies neutral or ambiguous text, since the underlying classification thresholds are rarely disclosed and can shift a score substantially.