How Dramatic Events Can Affect Emotionality in Social Posting: The Impact of COVID-19 on Reddit
Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: The COVID-19 outbreak impacted almost all the aspects of ordinary life. In this context, social networks quickly started playing the role of a sounding board for the content produced by people. Studying how dramatic events affect the way people interact with each other and react to poorly known situations is recognized as a relevant research task. Since automatically identifying country-based COVID-19 social posts on generalized social networks, like Twitter and Facebook, is a difficult task, in this work we concentrate on Reddit megathreads, which provide a unique opportunity to study focused reactions of people by both topic and country. We analyze specific reactions and we compare them with a “normal” period, not affected by the pandemic; in particular, we consider structural variations in social posting behavior, emotional reactions under the Plutchik model of basic emotions, and emotional reactions under unconventional emotions, such as skepticism, particularly relevant in the COVID-19 context.
Source: Future Internet
DOI: 10.3390/fi13020029
Institutions: University of Turin, University of Calabria
Language: English
Subfield: Artificial Intelligence
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,512
OpenAlex ID: W3122822309