Home // HUSO 2022, The Eighth International Conference on Human and Social Analytics // View article
Authors:
Megan Doman
Jacob Motley
Hong Qin
Mengjun Xie
Li Yang
Keywords: COVID-19; Election; Twitter; Sentiment Analysis
Abstract:
COVID-19 related policies were extensively politicized during the 2020 election year of the United States, resulting in polarizing viewpoints. Twitter users were particularly engaged during the 2020 election year. Here, we investigated whether COVID-19 related tweets were associated with the overall election results at the state level during the period leading up to the election day. We observed weak correlations between the average sentiment of COVID-19 related tweets and popular votes in two-week intervals, and the trends gradually become opposite for Democratic and Republican voting preferences. We then compared the average sentiments of COVID-19 related tweets between states called in favor of the Republican (red states) or Democratic parties (blue states). We found that at the beginning of lockdowns COVID-19 tweet sentiments in the blue states were much more positive than those in the red states. However, COVID-19 tweet sentiments in the red states gradually become more positive during the summer of 2020 and persisted until the election day.
Pages: 1 to 4
Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2022
Publication date: May 22, 2022
Published in: conference
ISSN: 2519-8351
ISBN: 978-1-61208-979-9
Location: Venice, Italy
Dates: from May 22, 2022 to May 26, 2022