Seafood, especially farmed seafood is getting more attention to meet the increasing seaf ood demand. Meanwhile, online chatter about seafood and aquaculture shows an array of opinions, positive and negative, suggesting growing interest in where people’s seafood comes from. This study analyzes online media opinions to assess consumer seafood sentiments and perceptions relating to salmon and shrimp. This study focuses on shrimp and salmon because they are two top-selling species and the most consumed seafood that also garner considerable attention online. Such analysis could give insights into potential demand signals for the species.
NetBase ®, an online media listening platform, was utilized to quantify online and social media chatter regarding U.S. seafood during a 48-month period, January 2019 through December 2022 . We utilized the Internet of Things (IoT) and data analytics approaches to examine national online information about shrimp and salmon and compare farm-raised and wild-caught separately. Search hits and mentions were quantified for top sources, domains, and prevalent terms. In addition, sentiment drivers and sentiment values were identified using natural language processing tools. O ur findings revealed a consistent tendency for farmed shrimp and salmon to exhibit lower net sentiments compared to their wild counterparts during the study period (Figure 1) . The exception, when the net sentiment of wild seafood wa s below that of farmed seafood, was usually linked with the topic of climate change.
When data are disaggregated into census regions, public attitudes toward both farmed shrimp and salmon in the East North Central have a greater net sentiment on average. W hereas the New England and Middle Atlantic have a lower net sentiment for farmed shrimp and salmon respectively. P ublic sentiments in East South Central and Middle Atlantic are characterized by higher variability for farmed s hrimp and the East North Central and New England regions exhibit greater sentiment variability for farmed salmon.