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. 2022 Feb 21:67:1604658.
doi: 10.3389/ijph.2022.1604658. eCollection 2022.

Public Attitudes During the Second Lockdown: Sentiment and Topic Analyses Using Tweets From Ontario, Canada

Shu-Feng Tsao  1 , Alexander MacLean  2 , Helen Chen  1 , Lianghua Li  3 , Yang Yang  1 , Zahid Ahmad Butt  1
Affiliations

Public Attitudes During the Second Lockdown: Sentiment and Topic Analyses Using Tweets From Ontario, Canada

Shu-Feng Tsao et al. Int J Public Health. .

Abstract

Objective: This study aimed to explore topics and sentiments using tweets from Ontario, Canada, during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: Tweets were collected from December 5, 2020, to March 6, 2021, excluding non-individual accounts. Dates of vaccine-related events and policy changes were collected from public health units in Ontario. The daily number of COVID-19 cases was retrieved from the Ontario provincial government's public health database. Latent Dirichlet Allocation was used for unsupervised topic modelling. VADER was used to calculate daily and average sentiment compound scores for topics identified. Results: Vaccine, pandemic, business, lockdown, mask, and Ontario were six topics identified from the unsupervised topic modelling. The average sentiment compound score for each topic appeared to be slightly positive, yet the daily sentiment compound scores varied greatly between positive and negative emotions for each topic. Conclusion: Our study results have shown a slightly positive sentiment on average during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario, along with six topics. Our research has also demonstrated a social listening approach to identify what the public sentiments and opinions are in a timely manner.

Keywords: COVID-19; lockdown; mask; sentiment analysis; social media; topic modelling; vaccine.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Flow diagram [Public Attitudes during the Second Lockdown: Sentiment and Topic Analyses using Tweets from Ontario, Canada, Canada, 2020].
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
COVID-19 cases in Toronto and Ottawa [Public Attitudes during the Second Lockdown: Sentiment and Topic Analyses using Tweets from Ontario, Canada, Canada, 2020].
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
The overall sentiment compund score [Public Attitudes during the Second Lockdown: Sentiment and Topic Analyses using Tweets from Ontario, Canada, Canada, 2020].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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