@inproceedings{fooladi-bottino-2026-beyond,
title = "Beyond Sentiment: Comparing Traditional {NLP} and {LLM}-Based Multi-Dimensional Analysis for Political News Evaluation",
author = "Fooladi, Maryam and
Bottino, Federico",
editor = "Afli, Haithem and
Bouamor, Houda and
Zaghouani, Wajdi and
Ghannay, Sahar and
Hossain, Shehenaz",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Natural Language Processing for Political Sciences ({P}olitical{NLP} 2026)",
month = may,
year = "2026",
address = "Palma, Mallorca (Spain)",
publisher = "ELRA Language Resources Association (ELRA)",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.politicalnlp-1.17/",
doi = "10.63317/2wbwmwq3jwfg",
pages = "159--164",
abstract = "Sentiment analysis remains the dominant computational approach for evaluating political news, yet its ability to capture the rhetorical complexity of political discourse is increasingly questioned. This paper presents a systematic comparison between a transformer-based sentiment classifier (RoBERTa) and a Large Language Model-based multi-dimensional framing analysis framework across 50 political news articles from 17 international outlets. While RoBERTa classifies 70{\%} of articles as neutral and reduces political discourse to a three-way polarity scale, the LLM-based framework captures 13 numerical dimensions including bias direction and intensity, manipulation indicators (cherry-picking, loaded language, false equivalence), sensationalism, and communicative intent. Our correlation analysis reveals only weak-to-moderate relationships between sentiment polarity and framing dimensions (maximum Pearson r = 0.38, p {\ensuremath{<}} 0.01), demonstrating that these approaches measure fundamentally different properties of political text. Through case studies, we show that sentiment-neutral articles can exhibit extreme manipulation patterns, while highly negative articles may reflect factual reporting on inherently negative events. These findings argue for moving beyond sentiment as a proxy for media quality, toward multi-dimensional frameworks that can reveal the rhetorical strategies invisible to polarity-based analysis. All data and analysis code will be made available upon acceptance."
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<abstract>Sentiment analysis remains the dominant computational approach for evaluating political news, yet its ability to capture the rhetorical complexity of political discourse is increasingly questioned. This paper presents a systematic comparison between a transformer-based sentiment classifier (RoBERTa) and a Large Language Model-based multi-dimensional framing analysis framework across 50 political news articles from 17 international outlets. While RoBERTa classifies 70% of articles as neutral and reduces political discourse to a three-way polarity scale, the LLM-based framework captures 13 numerical dimensions including bias direction and intensity, manipulation indicators (cherry-picking, loaded language, false equivalence), sensationalism, and communicative intent. Our correlation analysis reveals only weak-to-moderate relationships between sentiment polarity and framing dimensions (maximum Pearson r = 0.38, p \ensuremath< 0.01), demonstrating that these approaches measure fundamentally different properties of political text. Through case studies, we show that sentiment-neutral articles can exhibit extreme manipulation patterns, while highly negative articles may reflect factual reporting on inherently negative events. These findings argue for moving beyond sentiment as a proxy for media quality, toward multi-dimensional frameworks that can reveal the rhetorical strategies invisible to polarity-based analysis. All data and analysis code will be made available upon acceptance.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Beyond Sentiment: Comparing Traditional NLP and LLM-Based Multi-Dimensional Analysis for Political News Evaluation
%A Fooladi, Maryam
%A Bottino, Federico
%Y Afli, Haithem
%Y Bouamor, Houda
%Y Zaghouani, Wajdi
%Y Ghannay, Sahar
%Y Hossain, Shehenaz
%S Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Natural Language Processing for Political Sciences (PoliticalNLP 2026)
%D 2026
%8 May
%I ELRA Language Resources Association (ELRA)
%C Palma, Mallorca (Spain)
%F fooladi-bottino-2026-beyond
%X Sentiment analysis remains the dominant computational approach for evaluating political news, yet its ability to capture the rhetorical complexity of political discourse is increasingly questioned. This paper presents a systematic comparison between a transformer-based sentiment classifier (RoBERTa) and a Large Language Model-based multi-dimensional framing analysis framework across 50 political news articles from 17 international outlets. While RoBERTa classifies 70% of articles as neutral and reduces political discourse to a three-way polarity scale, the LLM-based framework captures 13 numerical dimensions including bias direction and intensity, manipulation indicators (cherry-picking, loaded language, false equivalence), sensationalism, and communicative intent. Our correlation analysis reveals only weak-to-moderate relationships between sentiment polarity and framing dimensions (maximum Pearson r = 0.38, p \ensuremath< 0.01), demonstrating that these approaches measure fundamentally different properties of political text. Through case studies, we show that sentiment-neutral articles can exhibit extreme manipulation patterns, while highly negative articles may reflect factual reporting on inherently negative events. These findings argue for moving beyond sentiment as a proxy for media quality, toward multi-dimensional frameworks that can reveal the rhetorical strategies invisible to polarity-based analysis. All data and analysis code will be made available upon acceptance.
%R 10.63317/2wbwmwq3jwfg
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.politicalnlp-1.17/
%U https://doi.org/10.63317/2wbwmwq3jwfg
%P 159-164
Markdown (Informal)
[Beyond Sentiment: Comparing Traditional NLP and LLM-Based Multi-Dimensional Analysis for Political News Evaluation](https://aclanthology.org/2026.politicalnlp-1.17/) (Fooladi & Bottino, PoliticalNLP 2026)
ACL