UCLouvain
" The Covid-19 outbreak has exposed the world's population to challenging and long-lasting emotional conditions. While investigations of responses to tragic one-off events exist, studies on the evolution of collective emotions during a pandemic are missing. Collecting the time-sensitive data about the population's collective emotional state could improve the planning of mental health interventions and risk-communication. In a first phase, we analyzed the digital traces of emotional expressions on Twitter in the five weeks after the outbreak in 8.3 billion tweets in six different languages from 18 countries. Next, we keep monitoring the evolution of emotional responses with particular attention to lexical indicators of solidarity according to the different phases of the pandemic's evolution, the resumption of activities, and economic and social difficulties in these 18 countries. "
Funding: This is a collaboration with the Complexity Science Hub Vienna (Austria). (These colleagues are providing the funding. As an emeritus professor, I have no access to funding and my research always relies on funds provided by colleagues)
Publication References: Metzler, Rimé, Niederkrotenthaler, Di Natale, & Garcia (2020). Collective emotions during the Covid-19 outbreak. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Contact: Bernard Rimé < This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>