Understanding Disagreement: An Annotation Study of Sentiment and Emotional Language in Environmental Communication

AbstractEmotional language is central to how environmental issues are communicated and received by the public. To better understand how such language is interpreted, we conducted an annotation study on sentiment and emotional language in texts from the environmental activist group Extinction Rebellion. The annotation process revealed substantial disagreement among annotators, highlighting the complexity and subjectivity involved in interpreting emotional language. In this paper, we analyze the sources of these disagreements, offering insights into how individual perspectives shape annotation outcomes. Our work contributes to ongoing discussions on perspectivism in NLP and emphasizes the importance of human-centered approaches and citizen science in analyzing environmental communication.