Thank you. In the context of this study, I found that it was impossible to accurately infer 'sentiment' of a single tweet or person (not just because of sarcas

Thank you. In the context of this study, I found that it was impossible to accurately infer 'sentiment' of a single tweet or person (not just because of sarcasm and other nuances). However, when you take the average of a group (wisdom of the crowd) then the results are much more promising. A trends noticed across thousands of users is also more interesting than the potentially unreliable sentiment of a single person. In this case, I suppose it is definitely just the words that are being analysed – not true 'sentiment.' I wouldn't rule it out as inaccurate though, it just depends what you're looking for and how you use the results. Compared to other sentiment data-sets, the ANEW approach seems more more detailed (the original scorings are created from human tagging). I do agree though, that automated approaches can be inaccurate if you're looking for fine-level analysis.