Abstract
BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic is a traumatic individual and collective chronic experience, with tremendous consequences on mental and psychological health that can also be reflected in people’s use of words. Psycholinguistic analysis of tweets from Twitter allows obtaining information about people’s emotional expression, analytical thinking, and somatosensory processes, which are particularly important in traumatic events contexts.ObjectiveWe aimed to analyze the influence of official Italian COVID-19 daily data (new cases, deaths, and hospital discharges) and the phase of managing the pandemic on how people expressed emotions and their analytical thinking and somatosensory processes in Italian tweets written during the first phases of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy.MethodsWe retrieved 1,697,490 Italian COVID-19–related tweets written from February 24, 2020 to June 14, 2020 and analyzed them using LIWC2015 to calculate 3 summary psycholinguistic variables: emotional tone, analytical thinking, and somatosensory processes. Official daily data about new COVID-19 cases, deaths, and hospital discharges were retrieved from the Italian Prime Minister's Office and Civil Protection Department GitHub page. We considered 3 phases of managing the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. We performed 3 general models, 1 for each summary variable as the dependent variable and with daily data and phase of managing the pandemic as independent variables.ResultsGeneral linear models to assess differences in daily scores of emotional tone, analytical thinking, and somatosensory processes were significant (F6,104=21.53, P<.001, R2= .55; F5,105=9.20, P<.001, R2= .30; F6,104=6.15, P<.001, R2=.26, respectively).ConclusionsThe COVID-19 pandemic affects how people express emotions, analytical thinking, and somatosensory processes in tweets. Our study contributes to the investigation of pandemic psychological consequences through psycholinguistic analysis of social media textual data.
Highlights
BackgroundAs a way to express information, news, opinions, and even private emotions and to connect people worldwide, Twitter, established in 2006, is a microblogging service that is the 13th most-used social media platform, with 340 million users [1]
We found a significant interaction between daily new cases and new deaths for COVID-19 in explaining emotional tone (F1,104=4.10, β=–.24, P=.045, ηp2=.04)
We found a significant interaction between daily new cases and new deaths related to COVID-19 in explaining somatosensory processes (F1,104=8.79, β=.44, P=.004, ηp2=.08)
Summary
BackgroundAs a way to express information, news, opinions, and even private emotions and to connect people worldwide, Twitter, established in 2006, is a microblogging service that is the 13th most-used social media platform, with 340 million users [1]. “metrics on the ‘chatter’ in discussion groups, blogs, and microblogs (eg, Twitter)” [4] are considered Along this line, various researchers have successfully used this kind of data in the health context. Psycholinguistic analysis of tweets from Twitter allows obtaining information about people’s emotional expression, analytical thinking, and somatosensory processes, which are important in traumatic events contexts. Objective: We aimed to analyze the influence of official Italian COVID-19 daily data (new cases, deaths, and hospital discharges) and the phase of managing the pandemic on how people expressed emotions and their analytical thinking and somatosensory processes in Italian tweets written during the first phases of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. Conclusions: The COVID-19 pandemic affects how people express emotions, analytical thinking, and somatosensory processes in tweets. Our study contributes to the investigation of pandemic psychological consequences through psycholinguistic analysis of social media textual data
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