Can social media predict this year’s Academy Award winners?

We’ll soon find out now that General Sentiment has put out its 2013 Oscar predictions, which uses social media metrics to find out the fan favorites. From Jan. 20 through Feb. 19, the company measured the tone of tweets of the nominees for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Actress. The mentions were considered positive, negative, or neutral, based on words such as good, bad, love, and hate.

If Twitter sentiment is to be believed as a valid predictor of this year’s key-category winners, then expect the following to walk away with some hardware Sunday night:

Best Picture: “Argo” (The Best Picture nominee receiving the lowest positive sentiment was “Lincoln.”)

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis in “Lincoln”

Best Actress: Emmanuelle Riva in “Amore.”

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