Viviani, Marco;
Crocamo, Cristina;
Mazzola, Matteo;
Bartoli, Francesco;
Carra, Giuseppe;
Pasi, Gabriella;
(2021)
Assessing vulnerability to psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic through the analysis of microblogging content.
Future Generation Computer Systems
, 125
pp. 446-459.
10.1016/j.future.2021.06.044.
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Abstract
In recent years we have witnessed a growing interest in the analysis of social media data under different perspectives, since these online platforms have become the preferred tool for generating and sharing content across different users organized into virtual communities, based on their common interests, needs, and perceptions. In the current study, by considering a collection of social textual contents related to COVID-19 gathered on the Twitter microblogging platform in the period between August and December 2020, we aimed at evaluating the possible effects of some critical factors related to the pandemic on the mental well-being of the population. In particular, we aimed at investigating potential lexicon identifiers of vulnerability to psychological distress in digital social interactions with respect to distinct COVID-related scenarios, which could be “at risk” from a psychological discomfort point of view. Such scenarios have been associated with peculiar topics discussed on Twitter. For this purpose, two approaches based on a “top-down” and a “bottom-up” strategy were adopted. In the top-down approach, three potential scenarios were initially selected by medical experts, and associated with topics extracted from the Twitter dataset in a hybrid unsupervised-supervised way. On the other hand, in the bottom-up approach, three topics were extracted in a totally unsupervised way capitalizing on a Twitter dataset filtered according to the presence of keywords related to vulnerability to psychological distress, and associated with at-risk scenarios. The identification of such scenarios with both approaches made it possible to capture and analyze the potential psychological vulnerability in critical situations.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Assessing vulnerability to psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic through the analysis of microblogging content |
| Location: | Netherlands |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.future.2021.06.044 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2021.06.044 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | Mental health, Vulnerability, Psychological distress, Social media, Social network analysis |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Division of Psychiatry |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10161261 |
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