What a machine said about Nehal Hashmi

Nehal Hashmi of the Pakistan Muslim League-N hit the news for a diatribe against the judiciary, which led to his resignation as senator and opened the doors to possible prosecution. Hashmi has said he was not threatening anybody in the video. I ran an emotions analysis on the video using Microsoft Face Video API cognitive services. As expected anger was the top emotion on his face during the two-minute clip. Surprise is the second most prominent emotion. Was it that he could not believe he was saying all those things about the judiciary? The fear levels are very low; he was perhaps not afraid of any repercussions.



Anger levels were high during the whole speech, but the graph’s surprise levels top at frame 600 and then drop significantly afterwards. Contempt levels start to increase at frame 750 when he starts praising Nawaz Sharif and talks about their Model Town house and how it was made by Nawaz Sharif’s father. Contempt increases when he starts talking about his party’s leadership. The other emotions are minute sadness and disgust peaking at around frame 600.

If you notice, there was a man standing behind Nehal. For some parts of the clip, he was behind Nehal so we could not do face emotions analysis. But I was surprised to see that happiness trumped all other emotions during his appearance on screen. He seemed to be desperately trying to dodge Nehal so his face came on camera.