Now a Twitter analysis of COVID-19 related posts can be done at the click of the mouse. Tweets can help the government with public insights about prevalent emotions and concerns about the virus.

An Emirati professor, from the Khalifa University of Science and Technology, has crafted a web tool which can capture all conversations about COVID and analyze related tweets in UAE.  

The analytical tool called “Analysis of Cross-linguistic markers of COVID-19 Tweets in the UAE” will capture tweets that can provide insight into people’s sentiments generally about novel coronavirus and how they look into government actions in mitigating the infection. This will allow the government to measure how people perceive actions taken by the health officials in the country to minimize the crisis.

Dr. Aamna Mohammed Al Shehhi, Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science, who created the tool, shared that the Twitter dashboard will help the government officials to gauge the social impact of coronavirus infection.

The assessment of public mood about the pandemic will help the government to fine-tune their actions, depending on the COVID narrative.

The project to create the web tool was supported by the Emirates ICT Innovation Centre, EBTIC, which is supported by Etisalat, BT, and the UAE ICT Fund along with then Khalifa University.

Analysis of Twitter feed and further policy action, in Dr. Al Shehhi’s words, highlights the “ever-increasing role of social media and its impact on policy-making.” 

The multi-lingual tool will give a much clearer picture of the information floating on Twitter and how the government can generate information through this platform to bring down anxiety about the disease.

The tool will help the government to measure the impact of COVID on social well-being.

The research so far analyzed Arabic and English tweets from 1st January to 1st May 2020. Some of the topics which generated best tweets are - the origin of the disease, the spread of the disease, treatment, and government responses.

The data analysis shows panic behavior in both Arabic and English tweets about Novel Coronavirus in early January. Tweets during this period were mostly about the virus, death, epidemic, and pneumonia. The study showed that the mood among Twitter account holders changed post-January. Tweets were more hopeful in sentiment.

This change in sentiment from fear to positivity highlights people followed the government’s action undertaken to fight the pandemic. It highlights that people have confidence in the healthcare system of the country. 

WAM