How Dramatic Events Can Affect Emotionality in Social Posting: The Impact of COVID-19 on Reddit

Valerio Basile, Francesco Cauteruccio and Giorgio Terracina
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Valerio Basile: Department of Computer Science, University of Turin, I10124 Torino, Italy
Francesco Cauteruccio: Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Calabria, I87036 Rende, Italy
Giorgio Terracina: Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Calabria, I87036 Rende, Italy

Future Internet, 2021, vol. 13, issue 2, 1-32

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.

Keywords: COVID-19; emotion analysis; plutchik model; reddit; skepticism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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