Covid-19 Sentiment Analysis

Our analysis, based on over 105 million social media posts in six languages spoken by 2.4 billion citizens worldwide, revealed that the global conversation on COVID-19 followed the spread of the pandemic, with the rise of the volume in China preceding those in Western and Arabic languages by 2 months. These conversations, regardless of language, showed a remarkably similar pattern of a rapid rise and then a slow decline over time across all nations, and the surge being affected by economic collapse and confinement decisions in Western nations. The global conversation had strongly negative reactions to specific topics, such as herd immunity strategies, which involve the acceptance of massive losses of lives among the elderly, and fake news designed to scare the public or spread conspiracy theories. Optimistic and positive sentiments increased over time and in parallel to a decrease in the volume of conversations, as policies were implemented to release the population from confinement and reactivate the economy as a result of lower infections and deaths.