Recent Progress in Automatic Sarcasm Detection

‘Sentiment mining’ – i.e. trying to gauge the Public’s attitude towards an institution, product, firm (etc. etc.) though automatic analysis of Social Media posts (etc. etc.) is now considered an essential tool for market researchers and ‘reputation managers’. But there are problems. One of which is sarcasm. Given its prevalence, serious errors can be introduced […]

The pleasures of listening to ironically-enjoyed music (new study)

“When you enjoy music in spite of the fact that it’s bad, because of the fact that it’s bad, or you enjoy it for a different reason than the musician intended” then that’s ‘ironically-enjoyed music’. The definition comes from a new (Aug 2016) study scheduled for publication in the Psychology of Music journal entitled : […]

The Pursuit of Irony

Savor, if you will, the merciless pursuit of irony, in a newly published paper, and then in gleeful commentary by people who read that paper. The paper is: “The Ethics of Ironic Science in Its Search for Spoof,” Maryam Ronagh, Lawrence Souder, Science and Engineering Ethics, epub December 16, 2014. The authors, at Drexel University, […]