EU Citizens’ Twitter Discussions of the 2022–23 Energy Crisis: A Content and Sentiment Analysis on the Verge of a Daunting Winter

Vasiliki Vrana (), Dimitrios Kydros (), Iordanis Kotzaivazoglou and Ioanna Pechlivanaki
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Vasiliki Vrana: Department of Business Administration, School of Economics and Administration, Campus of Serres, International Hellenic University, 62124 Serres, Greece
Dimitrios Kydros: Department of Economic Sciences, School of Economics and Administration, Campus of Serres, International Hellenic University, 62124 Serres, Greece
Iordanis Kotzaivazoglou: Department of Business Administration, School of Economics and Administration, Campus of Serres, International Hellenic University, 62124 Serres, Greece
Ioanna Pechlivanaki: Department of Business Administration, School of Economics and Administration, Campus of Serres, International Hellenic University, 62124 Serres, Greece

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 2, 1-22

Abstract: The 2022–2023 winter period is alleged to be one of the toughest since World War II with respect to energy, especially electricity, natural gas and oil. The paper investigates the public discussions on Twitter in five widely spoken European languages and English. Networks of users are formed in order to locate possible important nodes that control the distribution of information. The networks are rather sparse and do not belong to the general class of ‘small worlds’. The communities of users seem to gather around one user; however, users also interact with others within the groups. Regarding the users’ sentiments, the negatives are definitely higher than the positive ones. Sentiments appear to be stable in their scores during the examined period and for each language; fear and sadness are dominant among them. Energy prices are frequently discussed in all languages, along with major political events. Findings may help governments to better understand public views and develop an effective strategy to communicate with and protect EU citizens.

Keywords: energy crisis; Twitter; content analysis; sentiment analysis; EU citizens (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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