DW BUREAU / PATIALA Two PhD researchers Neetika Bansal and Mukhtiar Singh of the Punjabi University Department of Computer Science have developed a web-based Linux Interactive System Analysis (LI-SA) tool that is capable of identifying the languages in social media code mixed tweets, normalizing it and then analysing the sentiments of tweets as positive, negative, or neutral. Since decades, social media has been gaining popularity and has become an indispensable part of everyday life, be it reading, shopping, cooking, chatting, or anything else. Noticing the recent trends and interests of the society at large in Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp etc. Prof Vishal Goyal took initiative for the development of such software in 2016. This initiative was turned into reality when Neetika Bansal, Assistant Professor, College of Engineering and Management, Rampura Phul, and Mukhtiar Singh resident of the village Santokh Singh Wala, tehsil Jalalabad, district Fazilka, developed LI-SA tool. In the development of this software, Neetika Bansal took lead in completing the task of identifying the English and Punjabi the romanized text used in social media and normalizing it to its standard form while Mukhtiar Singh, research scholar from the Department of Computer Science, made a significant contribution to the sentiment analysis of the social media text. Highlighting the importance of this software, Prof Simple Rani of the Yadavindra College of Engineering, Talwandi Sabo, said that as Punjabi social media text is confined not only to the Punjabis in India but also those living abroad, this software uses worldwide data. Dr Sahil Raj, Assistant Professor, School of Management Studies, Punjabi University, said that the data set of this software includes 10 lakh posts from Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp. Elaborating the features of this software Neetika said that it can be used even by the people not well versed with computer technology. With this software, users can identify the language of the text entered, normalize it and can perform sentiment analysis with just one click. With this software even those people who don't know Punjabi language can comprehend the basic sentiments conveyed through the post. Moreover, this software helps in understanding the novel short forms used in the posts. Prof Vishal Goyal said that youngsters communicate frankly with their friends and relatives on social media. While earlier school children have always been refrained from continuous use of phones, laptops, tabs, and other electronic devices, in the present COVID-19 period electronic devices have become an important source of education for them. All these factors contribute to more complex social media data, as they inculcate creativity in spellings. He appreciated the hard work of the two Ph.D. researchers. Dr GS Batra, Dean (Research), Punjabi University, said that the Department of Computer Science has always taken the lead in doing research that is of practical use and is of use for society. (editor@dailyworld.in)