transforEmotion: An Open-Source R Package for Emotion Analysis Using Transformer-Based Generative AI Models
Abstract
This software demonstration article introduces transforEmotion, an open-source R package that addresses critical bottlenecks in communication research emotion analysis. Communication researchers currently face three key barriers: (1) modal fragmentation requiring separate tools for text/image/video analysis, (2) rigid emotion taxonomies that don't match theoretical frameworks, and (3) irreproducible workflows dependent on commercial APIs. transforEmotion removes these bottlenecks through unified multimodal processing, zero-shot classification with arbitrary labels, local inference capabilities, and seamless R integration. This enables systematic investigation of emotion dynamics across communication contexts and modalities that were previously technically difficult to analyze.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Emotion and Mood Recognition
Sentiment Analysis and Opinion Mining
Computational and Text Analysis Methods
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Computational Communication Research
- Publisher
- Amsterdam University Press
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 1–1
- Publication date
- 30 January 2026
- Language
- EN