Real-Time Infoveillance of Moroccan Social Media Users’ Sentiments towards the COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Management

Abdelghani Ghanem, Chaimae Asaad, Hakim Hafidi, Youness Moukafih, Bassma Guermah, Nada Sbihi, Mehdi Zakroum, Mounir Ghogho, Meriem Dairi, Mariam Cherqaoui and Karim Baina
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Abdelghani Ghanem: TICLab, College of Engineering & Architecture, International University of Rabat, Rabat 11103, Morocco
Chaimae Asaad: TICLab, College of Engineering & Architecture, International University of Rabat, Rabat 11103, Morocco
Hakim Hafidi: TICLab, College of Engineering & Architecture, International University of Rabat, Rabat 11103, Morocco
Youness Moukafih: TICLab, College of Engineering & Architecture, International University of Rabat, Rabat 11103, Morocco
Bassma Guermah: TICLab, College of Engineering & Architecture, International University of Rabat, Rabat 11103, Morocco
Nada Sbihi: TICLab, College of Engineering & Architecture, International University of Rabat, Rabat 11103, Morocco
Mehdi Zakroum: TICLab, College of Engineering & Architecture, International University of Rabat, Rabat 11103, Morocco
Mounir Ghogho: TICLab, College of Engineering & Architecture, International University of Rabat, Rabat 11103, Morocco
Meriem Dairi: College of Management, International University of Rabat, Rabat 11103, Morocco
Mariam Cherqaoui: University Ibn Tofail, Kenitra 14000, Morocco
Karim Baina: École Nationale Supérieure d’Informatique et d’Analyse des Systèmes, Mohammed V University, Rabat 10000, Morocco

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 22, 1-19

Abstract: The impact of COVID-19 on socio-economic fronts, public health related aspects and human interactions is undeniable. Amidst the social distancing protocols and the stay-at-home regulations imposed in several countries, citizens took to social media to cope with the emotional turmoil of the pandemic and respond to government issued regulations. In order to uncover the collective emotional response of Moroccan citizens to this pandemic and its effects, we use topic modeling to identify the most dominant COVID-19 related topics of interest amongst Moroccan social media users and sentiment/emotion analysis to gain insights into their reactions to various impactful events. The collected data consists of COVID-19 related comments posted on Twitter, Facebook and Youtube and on the websites of two popular online news outlets in Morocco (Hespress and Hibapress) throughout the year 2020. The comments are expressed in Moroccan Dialect (MD) or Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). To perform topic modeling and sentiment classification, we built a first Universal Language Model for the Moroccan Dialect (MD-ULM) using available corpora, which we have fine-tuned using our COVID-19 dataset. We show that our method significantly outperforms classical machine learning classification methods in Topic Modeling, Emotion Recognition and Polar Sentiment Analysis. To provide real-time infoveillance of these sentiments, we developed an online platform to automate the execution of the different processes, and in particular regular data collection. This platform is meant to be a decision-making assistance tool for COVID-19 mitigation and management in Morocco.

Keywords: COVID-19; emotion analysis; machine learning; polar sentiment analysis; topic modeling; universal language model for Moroccan dialect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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