The Social Aspects of Sexual Health: A Twitter-Based Analysis of Valentine’s Day Perception

Andrea Sansone,Francesco Romanelli,Daniele Mollaioli,Angelo Cignarelli,Giacomo Ciocca,Emmanuele A Jannini,Giancarlo Balercia,Erika Limoncin

doi:10.3390/sexes2010004

Abstract

Sentiment analysis (SA) is a technique aimed at extracting opinions and sentiments through the analysis of text, often used in healthcare research to understand patients’ needs and interests. Data from social networks, such as Twitter, can provide useful insights on sexual behavior. We aimed to assess the perception of Valentine’s Day by performing SA on tweets we collected between 28 January and 13 February 2019. Analysis was done using ad hoc software. A total of 883,615 unique tweets containing the word “valentine” in their text were collected. Geo-localization was available for 48,918 tweets; most the tweets came from the US (36,889, 75.41%), the UK (2605, 5.33%) and Canada (1661, 3.4%). The number of tweets increased approaching February 14. “Love” was the most recurring word, appearing in 111,981 tweets, followed by “gift” (55,136), “special” (34,518) and “happy” (33,913). Overall, 7318 tweets mentioned “sex”: among these tweets, the most recurring words were “sexy” (2317 tweets), “love” (1394) and “gift” (679); words pertaining to intimacy and sexual activity, such as “lingerie”, “porn”, and “date” were less common. In conclusion, tweets about Valentine’s Day mostly focus on the emotions, or on the material aspect of the celebration, and the sexual aspect of Valentine’s Day is rarely mentioned.

Highlights

Valentine’s Day is a feast celebrated annually, on February 14, traditionally associated with the celebration of love and romance
“Valentine”; geo-localization was available for 48,918 tweets only, showing that, as expected due to the English term used for the search, most tweets came from users in the US (36,889, 75.41%), in the UK (2605, 5.33%) and in Canada (1661, 3.4%)
Tweets pertaining to sexual activity are not unheard of, and several anecdotal reports suggest increasing anxiety when Valentine’s Day approaches

Summary

Introduction

Valentine’s Day is a feast celebrated annually, on February 14, traditionally associated with the celebration of love and romance. The history of Saint Valentine and the reasons for celebrating love on its day are controversial and often disputed. St. Valentine, a clergyman from Rome or the nearby village of Terni, was beheaded in 269 AD, on February 14th [1], in a time window possibly associated with the ancient roman feast of the Lupercalia, a rite connected with fertility. While several Christian recurrences have been superimposed onto preexisting pagan and local feasts, in this case there is little, if any, direct evidence suggesting an association between the two celebrations. Valentine’s Day was first associated with its current romantic connotations several centuries later: the first mention of Valentine’s Day as a celebration of courtly love occurs in Chaucer’s poetry

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