IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jftint/v13y2021i2p29-d487606.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • 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)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Valerio Basile & Francesco Cauteruccio & Giorgio Terracina, 2021. "How Dramatic Events Can Affect Emotionality in Social Posting: The Impact of COVID-19 on Reddit," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-32, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jftint:v:13:y:2021:i:2:p:29-:d:487606
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/13/2/29/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/13/2/29/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Theresa Kuchler & Dominic Russel & Johannes Stroebel, 2020. "The Geographic Spread of COVID-19 Correlates with the Structure of Social Networks as Measured by Facebook," NBER Working Papers 26990, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Per Block & Marion Hoffman & Isabel J. Raabe & Jennifer Beam Dowd & Charles Rahal & Ridhi Kashyap & Melinda C. Mills, 2020. "Social network-based distancing strategies to flatten the COVID-19 curve in a post-lockdown world," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 4(6), pages 588-596, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jinhai Li & Yunlei Ma & Xinglong Xu & Jiaming Pei & Youshi He, 2022. "A Study on Epidemic Information Screening, Prevention and Control of Public Opinion Based on Health and Medical Big Data: A Case Study of COVID-19," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(16), pages 1-21, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Diemer, Andreas & Regan, Tanner, 2022. "No inventor is an island: Social connectedness and the geography of knowledge flows in the US," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(2).
    2. Mehmet Ronael & Tüzin Baycan, 2022. "Place-based factors affecting COVID-19 incidences in Turkey," Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 1053-1086, October.
    3. Dennis Opoku Boadu & Justice Kwame Appati & Joseph Agyapong Mensah, 2024. "Exploring the Effectiveness of Graph-based Computational Models in COVID-19 Research," SN Operations Research Forum, Springer, vol. 5(3), pages 1-41, September.
    4. Carozzi, Felipe & Provenzano, Sandro & Roth, Sefi, 2020. "Urban Density and COVID-19," IZA Discussion Papers 13440, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Maxim Ananyev & Michael Poyker & Yuan Tian, 2021. "The safest time to fly: pandemic response in the era of Fox News," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(3), pages 775-802, July.
    6. Chad Cotti & Bryan Engelhardt & Joshua Foster & Erik Nesson & Paul Niekamp, 2021. "The relationship between in‐person voting and COVID‐19: Evidence from the Wisconsin primary," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 39(4), pages 760-777, October.
    7. Wu, Di & Hamilton, Hanna & Jagrowski, Liam & Nazzal, Dima & Steimle, Lauren N., 2024. "Revisiting the small-world property of co-enrollment networks: A network analysis of hybrid course delivery strategies," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    8. Matthias Flückiger & Markus Ludwig, 2023. "Spatial networks and the spread of COVID-19: results and policy implications from Germany," Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, Springer;Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR), vol. 43(1), pages 1-27, April.
    9. Viktoriia Shubina & Sylvia Holcer & Michael Gould & Elena Simona Lohan, 2020. "Survey of Decentralized Solutions with Mobile Devices for User Location Tracking, Proximity Detection, and Contact Tracing in the COVID-19 Era," Data, MDPI, vol. 5(4), pages 1-40, September.
    10. Khan, Syed Abdul Rehman & Razzaq, Asif & Yu, Zhang & Shah, Adeel & Sharif, Arshian & Janjua, Laeeq, 2022. "Disruption in food supply chain and undernourishment challenges: An empirical study in the context of Asian countries," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 82(PA).
    11. David Bounie & Youssouf Camara & John Galbraith, 2020. "Consumers’ Mobility, Expenditure and Online-Offline Substitution Response to COVID-19: Evidence from French Transaction Data," Cahiers de recherche 14-2020, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    12. Chenghe Guan & Junjie Tan & Brian Hall & Chao Liu & Ying Li & Zhichang Cai, 2022. "The Effect of the Built Environment on the COVID-19 Pandemic at the Initial Stage: A County-Level Study of the USA," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-17, March.
    13. Aracil-Jordá, Jorge & Clemente-Almendros, Jose-Antonio & Jiménez-Zarco, Ana-Isabel & González-González, Inés, 2023. "Improving the social performance of women-led microenterprises: The role of social media marketing actions," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    14. Roland Pongou & Guy Tchuente & Jean-Baptiste Tondji, 2020. "An Economic Model of Health-vs-Wealth Prioritization During COVID-19: Optimal Lockdown, Network Centrality, and Segregation," Working Papers 2009E Classification-E61,, University of Ottawa, Department of Economics.
    15. Minda Hu & Mayank Kejriwal, 2022. "Measuring spatio-textual affinities in twitter between two urban metropolises," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 227-252, May.
    16. Monte, Ferdinando, 2020. "Mobility Zones," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    17. Victor Aguirregabiria & Jiaying Gu & Yao Luo & Pedro Mira, 2020. "A Dynamic Structural Model of Virus Diffusion and Network Production: A First Report," Working Papers tecipa-665, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    18. Virgilio Pérez & Cristina Aybar & Jose M. Pavía, 2021. "COVID-19 and Changes in Social Habits. Restaurant Terraces, a Booming Space in Cities. The Case of Madrid," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(17), pages 1-18, September.
    19. Fabio Milani, 2021. "COVID-19 outbreak, social response, and early economic effects: a global VAR analysis of cross-country interdependencies," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(1), pages 223-252, January.
    20. Valsecchi, Michele & Durante, Ruben, 2021. "Internal migration networks and mortality in home communities: Evidence from Italy during the Covid-19 pandemic," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jftint:v:13:y:2021:i:2:p:29-:d:487606. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.