Abstract
In recent years, research on Social Networking Service (SNS) has made remarkable progress. However, there has been no research on SNS related to early childhood care and education. This study examined the emotional valence of tweets containing the Japanese word “Hoiku” posted by nursery teachers on Twitter. A total of 3,287,646 tweets were initially collected by scraping. Among the collected tweets, those that were not relevant to the purpose of this study were deleted. Finally, 68,544 tweets were used for analysis. The results showed that tweets by nursery teachers contained significantly more positive words on emotion than by certified care workers and nurses. In addition, tweets by nursery teachers contained more anxiety words than by nurses. Taken together, this study suggests that while some nursery teachers find their work and occupation attractive and rewarding, others are dissatisfied.
