Examining Emotional Reactions to the COVID-19 Crisis Through Twitter Data Analysis: A Comparative Study of Classification Techniques

COVID-19 has significantly impacted peoples’ mental health because of isolation and social distancing measures. It practically impacts every segment of people’s daily lives and causes a medical problem that spreads throughout the entire world. This pandemic has caused an increased emotional distress...

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Main Authors: Saira Yaqub, Muhammad Shoaib, Abdul Jaleel, Syed Khaldoon Khurshid, Shazia Arshad, Riaz Ahmad Ziar
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2024-01-01
Series:Applied Computational Intelligence and Soft Computing
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2024/8889330
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author Saira Yaqub
Muhammad Shoaib
Abdul Jaleel
Syed Khaldoon Khurshid
Shazia Arshad
Riaz Ahmad Ziar
author_facet Saira Yaqub
Muhammad Shoaib
Abdul Jaleel
Syed Khaldoon Khurshid
Shazia Arshad
Riaz Ahmad Ziar
author_sort Saira Yaqub
collection DOAJ
description COVID-19 has significantly impacted peoples’ mental health because of isolation and social distancing measures. It practically impacts every segment of people’s daily lives and causes a medical problem that spreads throughout the entire world. This pandemic has caused an increased emotional distress. Since everyone has been affected by the epidemic physically, emotionally, and financially, it is crucial to examine and comprehend emotional reactions as the crisis affects mental health. This study uses Twitter data to understand what people feel during the pandemic. We collected Twitter data about COVID-19 and isolation, preprocessed the text, and then classified the tweets into various emotion classes. The data are collected using the twarc library and the Twitter academic researcher account and labeled using a Vader analyzer after preprocessing. We trained five machine learning models, namely, support vector machine (SVM), Naïve Bayes, KNN, decision tree, and logistic regression to find patterns and trends in emotions. The emotional reactions of individuals to the COVID-19 crisis are then analyzed. We applied precision, recall, F1-score, and accuracy as the evaluation metrics, which shows that SVM has performed best among other models. Our results show that isolated people felt various emotions, out of which, fear, sadness, and surprise were the most common. This study gives insights into the emotional impact of the pandemic and shows the power of Twitter data in understanding mental health outcomes. Our findings can be used to develop targeted interventions and support strategies to address the emotional toll of the pandemic.
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spelling doaj-art-0db14f451d9c4948971ba1d96aef492e2025-08-20T02:02:25ZengWileyApplied Computational Intelligence and Soft Computing1687-97322024-01-01202410.1155/2024/8889330Examining Emotional Reactions to the COVID-19 Crisis Through Twitter Data Analysis: A Comparative Study of Classification TechniquesSaira Yaqub0Muhammad Shoaib1Abdul Jaleel2Syed Khaldoon Khurshid3Shazia Arshad4Riaz Ahmad Ziar5Department of Computer ScienceDepartment of Computer ScienceDepartment of Computer Science (RCET, GRW)Department of Computer ScienceDepartment of Computer ScienceDepartment of Computer ScienceCOVID-19 has significantly impacted peoples’ mental health because of isolation and social distancing measures. It practically impacts every segment of people’s daily lives and causes a medical problem that spreads throughout the entire world. This pandemic has caused an increased emotional distress. Since everyone has been affected by the epidemic physically, emotionally, and financially, it is crucial to examine and comprehend emotional reactions as the crisis affects mental health. This study uses Twitter data to understand what people feel during the pandemic. We collected Twitter data about COVID-19 and isolation, preprocessed the text, and then classified the tweets into various emotion classes. The data are collected using the twarc library and the Twitter academic researcher account and labeled using a Vader analyzer after preprocessing. We trained five machine learning models, namely, support vector machine (SVM), Naïve Bayes, KNN, decision tree, and logistic regression to find patterns and trends in emotions. The emotional reactions of individuals to the COVID-19 crisis are then analyzed. We applied precision, recall, F1-score, and accuracy as the evaluation metrics, which shows that SVM has performed best among other models. Our results show that isolated people felt various emotions, out of which, fear, sadness, and surprise were the most common. This study gives insights into the emotional impact of the pandemic and shows the power of Twitter data in understanding mental health outcomes. Our findings can be used to develop targeted interventions and support strategies to address the emotional toll of the pandemic.http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2024/8889330
spellingShingle Saira Yaqub
Muhammad Shoaib
Abdul Jaleel
Syed Khaldoon Khurshid
Shazia Arshad
Riaz Ahmad Ziar
Examining Emotional Reactions to the COVID-19 Crisis Through Twitter Data Analysis: A Comparative Study of Classification Techniques
Applied Computational Intelligence and Soft Computing
title Examining Emotional Reactions to the COVID-19 Crisis Through Twitter Data Analysis: A Comparative Study of Classification Techniques
title_full Examining Emotional Reactions to the COVID-19 Crisis Through Twitter Data Analysis: A Comparative Study of Classification Techniques
title_fullStr Examining Emotional Reactions to the COVID-19 Crisis Through Twitter Data Analysis: A Comparative Study of Classification Techniques
title_full_unstemmed Examining Emotional Reactions to the COVID-19 Crisis Through Twitter Data Analysis: A Comparative Study of Classification Techniques
title_short Examining Emotional Reactions to the COVID-19 Crisis Through Twitter Data Analysis: A Comparative Study of Classification Techniques
title_sort examining emotional reactions to the covid 19 crisis through twitter data analysis a comparative study of classification techniques
url http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2024/8889330
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