Classification of Arabic Tweets: A Review

Text classification is a prominent research area, gaining more interest in academia, industry and social media. Arabic is one of the world’s most famous languages and it had a significant role in science, mathematics and philosophy in Europe in the middle ages. During the Arab Spring, social media, that is, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, played an essential role in establishing, running, and spreading these movements. Arabic Sentiment Analysis (ASA) and Arabic Text Classification (ATC) for these social media tools are hot topics, aiming to obtain valuable Arabic text insights. Although some surveys are available on this topic, the studies and research on Arabic Tweets need to be classified on the basis of machine learning algorithms. Machine learning algorithms and lexicon-based classifications are considered essential tools for text processing. In this paper, a comparison of previous surveys is presented, elaborating the need for a comprehensive study on Arabic Tweets. Research studies are classified according to machine learning algorithms, supervised learning, unsupervised learning, hybrid, and lexicon-based classifications, and their advantages/disadvantages are discussed comprehensively. We pose different challenges and future research directions.