How Do Arab Tweeters Perceive the COVID-19 Pandemic?

ABSTRACT: Language reflects several cognitive variables that are grounded in cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. This paper examines how Arab populations reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter over twelve weeks since the outbreak. We conducted a lexicon-based thematic analysis using corpus tools, and LIWC and applied R language's stylo. The dominant themes that were closely related to coronavirus tweets included the outbreak of the pandemic, metaphysics responses, signs and symptoms in confirmed cases, and conspiracism. The psycholinguistic analysis also showed that tweeters maintained high levels of affective talk, which was loaded with negative emotions and sadness. Also, LIWC's psychological categories of religion and health dominated the Arabic tweets discussing t

SUBMITTER: Essam BA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7427268 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature