  In this paper, we consider the problem of latent sentiment detection in
Online Social Networks such as Twitter. We demonstrate the benefits of using
the underlying social network as an Ising prior to perform network aided
sentiment detection. We show that the use of the underlying network results in
substantially lower detection error rates compared to strictly features-based
detection. In doing so, we introduce a novel communications-oriented framework
for characterizing the probability of error, based on information-theoretic
analysis. We study the variation of the calculated error exponent for several
stylized network topologies such as the complete network, the star network and
the closed-chain network, and show the importance of the network structure in
determining detection performance.
