Sentiment Analysis of News Headlines as a Tool for Language Learning Enhancement
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.56592/flj.v1i32.2324Keywords:
sentiment analysis, language learning, news headlines, vocabulary, reading comprehensionAbstract
This study explores the application of sentiment analysis in news headlines as a means of enhancing language learning, with a focus on how sentiment polarity influences vocabulary retention, learner engagement, and comprehension. It seeks to develop a practical framework for integrating sentiment-analyzed headlines into second language (L2) activities. Using a mixed-methods approach, the research combines quantitative content analysis and computational sentiment analysis to examine sentiment patterns in Libya-related news headlines from Al-Jazeera and BBC (2024–2025). The findings reveal distinct editorial tendencies between the two outlets: Al-Jazeera’s coverage demonstrates a relatively balanced sentiment distribution, whereas BBC’s headlines exhibit a significantly more negative tone. These results highlight the potential of sentiment-filtered news content as a pedagogical tool as they offer insights into how emotional framing in media can shape language acquisition outcomes
References
Balahur, A., Hermida, J. M., & Montoyo, A. (2012). "Building and exploiting EmotiNet, a knowledge base for emotion detection based on the appraisal theory model." IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, 5(1), 88-101.
Boers, F., & Webb, S. (2015). Gauging the semantic transparency of idioms: Do natives and learners see eye to eye? In R. R. Heredia & A. B. Cieślicka (Eds.) Bilingual Figurative Language Processing (pp. 368-392). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bovet, A., & Makse, H. A. (2019). "Influence of fake news in Twitter during the 2016 US presidential election." Nature Communications, 10(1), 1-14.
Boyd, d., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210-230.
Bringsjord, S., Bello, P., & Ferrucci, D. (2001). Creativity, the Turing test, and the (Better) Lovelace Test. Minds and Machines: Journal for Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy and Cognitive Science, 11(1), 3–27.
Calvo, R. A., D’Mello, S., Gratch, J., & Kappas, A. (2015). The Oxford Handbook of Affective Computing. Oxford University Press.
Cambria, E. (2016). Affective Computing and Sentiment Analysis. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 31, 102-107.
Cambria, E., Poria, S., Hazarika, D., & Kwok, K. (2017). "SenticNet 5: Discovering Conceptual Primitives for Sentiment Analysis." ACM Transactions on Information Systems. Available at:
Chen, M., Chen, W., & Ku, L. (2018). Application of Sentiment Analysis to Language Learning. IEEE Access, 6, 24433-24442.
Choudhury, M.D., Gamon, M., Counts, S., & Horvitz, E. (2013). Predicting Depression via Social Media. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media.
Crossley, S. A., Kyle, K., & McNamara, D. S. (2017). Sentiment analysis and social cognition engine (SEANCE): An automatic tool for sentiment, social cognition, and social-order analysis. Behavior Research Methods, 49(3), 803-821,
Del Vicario, M., Bessi, A., Zollo, F., Petroni, F., Scala, A., Caldarelli, G., Stanley, H. E., & Quattrociocchi, W. (2016). The spreading of misinformation online. PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 113(3), 554–559.
Devlin, J., Chang, M. W., Lee, K., & Toutanova, K. (2019). "BERT: Pre-training of deep bidirectional transformers for language understanding." Proceedings of NAACL-HLT, 1, 41714186.
Dewaele, J. (2005). Investigating the Psychological and Emotional Dimensions in Instructed Language Learning: Obstacles and Possibilities. The Modern Language Journal, 89, 367-380.
D’Mello, S., & Kory, J. (2015). "A Review and Meta-Analysis of Multimodal Affect Detection Systems." ACM Computing Surveys, 47(3), 1-36.
Dor, D. (2003). On newspaper headlines as relevance optimizers. Journal of Pragmatics, 35(5), 695-721.
Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51-58
Ethelb, H. (2023). Sociology of news reporting: the case of Libyan social media society. Faculty of Languages Journal-Tripoli-Libya, 1
–17
Feldman, R. (2013). Techniques and Applications for Sentiment Analysis. Communications of the ACM, 56, 82-89.
Ghiassi, M., Skinner, J., & Zimbra, D. (2013). Twitter brand sentiment analysis: A hybrid system using n-gram analysis and dynamic artificial neural network. Expert Syst. Appl., 40, 6266-6282.
Kukulska-Hulme, A., & Shield, L. (2008). An overview of mobile assisted language learning: From content delivery to supported collaboration and interaction. ReCALL, 20, 271-289.
Lange, K., & Matthews, J. (2020). Exploring the relationships between L2 vocabulary knowledge, lexical segmentation, and L2 listening comprehension. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 10 (4), 723-749. DOI: 10.14746/ssllt.2020.10.4.4
Laufer, B., & Waldman, T. (2011). Verb-noun collocations in second language writing: A corpus analysis of learners’ English. Language Learning, 61(2), 647-672.
Liang, T. P., Ho, Y. T., Li, Y. W., & Turban, E. (2011). What Drives Social Commerce: The Role of Social Support and Relationship Quality. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 16, 69-90.
Liu, B. (2012). Sentiment analysis and opinion mining. Synthesis Lectures on Human Language Technologies. Morgan & Claypool.
Liu, P. L., Chen, C. J., & Chang, Y. J. (2010). Effects of a computer-assisted concept mapping learning strategy on EFL college students’ English reading comprehension. Computers & Education, 54, 436-445.
Medhat, W., Hassan, A. and Korashy, H. (2014) Sentiment Analysis Algorithms and Applications: A Survey. Ain Shams Engineering Journal, 5, 1093-1113.
Mohammad, S. M. (2018). Word affect intensities. Proceedings of LREC 2018, 174-183.
Mouzughi, H., & Ethelb, H. (2024). Translating metaphor in disturbing news contexts: A case study of the Israel-Gaza War. Faculty of Languages Journal-Tripoli-Libya, 1(30).
Nielsen, F. Å. (2011). A new ANEW: Evaluation of a word list for sentiment analysis in microblogs. Proceedings of the ESWC Workshop, 93-98.
Pang, B., & Lee, L. (2008). "Opinion mining and sentiment analysis." Foundations and Trends in Information Retrieval, 2, 1-135.
Pavlenko, A. (2008). Emotion and emotion-laden words in the bilingual lexicon. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11(2), 147-164.
Pontiki, M., Galanis, D., Pavlopoulos, J., Papageorgiou, H., Androutsopoulos, I., & Manandhar, S. (2014). SemEval-2014 Task 4: Aspect Based Sentiment Analysis. International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation, 27–35, Dublin, Ireland. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Faculty of Languages Journal-Tripoli-Libya

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
https://orcid.org/0009-0002-8251-5878







