Read on Twitter
The answer is yes. You can plot Covid19 conversational data and see that we are in a period of intense emotion. The only emotion more prominent than RAGE is GRIEF. How we respond should vary based on the mood of Canadians. @TorontoStar https://twitter.com/TorontoStar/status/1288443245870145538
When we measure against 32 different emotions, discounting any data where emotions are not described, we find the lead emotion is GRIEF at 17.5% (for July 2020, Canada). Or all sad emotions is 1/4 of all Covid19 conversations. #psychology #COVID__19 #Canada
But here is the catch. Today - the emotions are very intense. People are not just sad, they are grieving based on the language they use. They are not just angry, they are RAGING. And when we have intense emotions - moods can swing quickly to other intense emotions.
Here is a visual of top emotions - bottom purple is grief, deep purple pink is rage. Light teal colours are interest & anticipation - likely the reopening - but we can drill down to those lead content themes.
Because we've developed proprietary parsing, we can plot out changes in mood. Like this.. using Plutchik's wheel of emotion. #plutchik
Now how you respond as a politician, business or brand really depends on how the mood is. If your audience is in fear (and you should have see March!) - then you give information and education. etc.
The challenge in all of this is that our language changes quickly - which is also why simple sentiment analysis is flawed, beyond which most people measure only 6 emotions. #contentstrategy
And that is what we've been working on during the pandemic
