Social Sharing of Emotion During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The long-term uncertainty and persistence of isolation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic created prolonged emotional distress individually and collectively. As the pandemic progressed, the dynamic ride of emotional experience was expressed live and shared online, particularly on social media. In this study, we collected posted messages on Twitter for a longitudinal investigation to determine how emotional experiences changed over time during the pandemic. In total, we analyzed 41,868,013 COVID-19-related tweets in English posted from January 21 to July 31, 2020. Using a stage model, the results demonstrated that there were three stages during the pandemic characterized by distinct emotional changes. The first stage features high anxiety and negative emotions compared with the other stages, possibly due to the lack of information about the disease. The second stage shows the dynamic ride of all emotions and an increase in negative emotions (particularly anger) as the COVID-19 pandemic proceeds. In the third stage, most emotions are stabilized, except for depression, despite the protracted pandemic.