A Comprehensive Survey of Contemporary Arabic Sentiment Analysis: Methods, Challenges, and Future Directions

Zhiqiang Shi, Ruchit Agrawal


Abstract
Sentiment Analysis, a popular subtask of Natural Language Processing, employs computational methods to extract sentiment, opinions, and other subjective aspects from linguistic data. Given its crucial role in understanding human sentiment, research in sentiment analysis has witnessed significant growth in the recent years. However, the majority of approaches are aimed at the English language, and research towards Arabic sentiment analysis remains relatively unexplored. This paper presents a comprehensive and contemporary survey of Arabic Sentiment Analysis, identifies the challenges and limitations of existing literature in this field and presents avenues for future research. We present a systematic review of Arabic sentiment analysis methods, focusing specifically on research utilizing deep learning. We then situate Arabic Sentiment Analysis within the broader context, highlighting research gaps in Arabic sentiment analysis as compared to general sentiment analysis. Finally, we outline the main challenges and promising future directions for research in Arabic sentiment analysis.
Anthology ID:
2025.findings-naacl.208
Volume:
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: NAACL 2025
Month:
April
Year:
2025
Address:
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Editors:
Luis Chiruzzo, Alan Ritter, Lu Wang
Venue:
Findings
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
3760–3772
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URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/fix-sig-urls/2025.findings-naacl.208/
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Cite (ACL):
Zhiqiang Shi and Ruchit Agrawal. 2025. A Comprehensive Survey of Contemporary Arabic Sentiment Analysis: Methods, Challenges, and Future Directions. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: NAACL 2025, pages 3760–3772, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
A Comprehensive Survey of Contemporary Arabic Sentiment Analysis: Methods, Challenges, and Future Directions (Shi & Agrawal, Findings 2025)
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https://preview.aclanthology.org/fix-sig-urls/2025.findings-naacl.208.pdf