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Social Network Analysis and Mining
Published in: Social Network Analysis and Mining 1/2021

01-12-2021 | Original Article

Identification of affective valence of Twitter generated sentiments during the COVID-19 outbreak

Authors: Ruchi Mittal, Amit Mittal, Ishan Aggarwal

Published in: Social Network Analysis and Mining | Issue 1/2021

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Abstract

This study aims to conduct text mining of affective valence of the sentiments generated on social media during the COVID-19 and measure their association with different outcomes of the disease. 50,000 tweets per day over 23 days during the pandemic were extracted using the VADER sentiment analysis tool. Overall, tweets could effectively be classified in terms of polarity, i.e., “positive,” “negative” and “neutral” sentiments. Furthermore, on a day-to-day basis, the study identified a positive and significant relationship between COVID-19-related (a) global infections and negative tweets, (b) global deaths and negative tweets, (c) recoveries and negative tweets, and (d) recoveries and positive tweets. No significant association could be found between (e) infections and positive tweets and (f) deaths and positive tweets. Furthermore, the statistical analysis also indicated that the daily distribution of tweets based on polarity generates three distinct and significantly different numbers of tweets per category, i.e., positive, negative and neutral. As per the results generated through sentiment analysis of tweets in this study, the emergence of “positive” tweets in such a gloomy pandemic scenario shows the inherent resilience of humans. The significant association between news of COVID-19 recoveries and positive tweets seems to hint at a more optimistic scenario whenever the pandemic finally comes to an end or is controlled. Such public reactions—for good—have the potential to go viral and influence several others, especially those who are classified as “neutral” or fence-sitters.
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Metadata
Title
Identification of affective valence of Twitter generated sentiments during the COVID-19 outbreak
Authors
Ruchi Mittal
Amit Mittal
Ishan Aggarwal
Publication date
01-12-2021
Publisher
Springer Vienna
Published in
Social Network Analysis and Mining / Issue 1/2021
Print ISSN: 1869-5450
Electronic ISSN: 1869-5469
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-021-00828-x

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