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. 2020 Aug 3:8:142173-142190.
doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3013933. eCollection 2020.

Feeling Positive About Reopening? New Normal Scenarios From COVID-19 US Reopen Sentiment Analytics

Jim Samuel  1 , Md Mokhlesur Rahman  2 , G G Md Nawaz Ali  3 , Yana Samuel  4 , Alexander Pelaez  5 , Peter Han Joo Chong  6 , Michael Yakubov  7
Affiliations
Free PMC article

Feeling Positive About Reopening? New Normal Scenarios From COVID-19 US Reopen Sentiment Analytics

Jim Samuel et al. IEEE Access. .
Free PMC article

Abstract

The Coronavirus pandemic has created complex challenges and adverse circumstances. This research identifies public sentiment amidst problematic socioeconomic consequences of the lockdown, and explores ensuing four potential public sentiment associated scenarios. The severity and brutality of COVID-19 have led to the development of extreme feelings, and emotional and mental healthcare challenges. This research focuses on emotional consequences - the presence of extreme fear, confusion and volatile sentiments, mixed along with trust and anticipation. It is necessary to gauge dominant public sentiment trends for effective decisions and policies. This study analyzes public sentiment using Twitter Data, time-aligned to the COVID-19 reopening debate, to identify dominant sentiment trends associated with the push to reopen the economy. Present research uses textual analytics methodologies to analyze public sentiment support for two potential divergent scenarios - an early opening and a delayed opening, and consequences of each. Present research concludes on the basis of textual data analytics, including textual data visualization and statistical validation, that tweets data from American Twitter users shows more positive sentiment support, than negative, for reopening the US economy. This research develops a novel sentiment polarity based public sentiment scenarios (PSS) framework, which will remain useful for future crises analysis, well beyond COVID-19. With additional validation, this research stream could present valuable time sensitive opportunities for state governments, the federal government, corporations and societal leaders to guide local and regional communities, and the nation into a successful new normal future.

Keywords: COVID-19; Twitter; coronavirus; feeling; new normal; reopen; sentiment analysis; textual analytics.

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Figures

FIGURE 1.
FIGURE 1.
Reopening public sentiment summary.
FIGURE 2.
FIGURE 2.
Wordcloud summary of tweets data.
FIGURE 3.
FIGURE 3.
Impact of COVID-19 outbreak on medical resources in the US (source, CDC [35]).
FIGURE 4.
FIGURE 4.
COVID-19 outbreak by states as of May 7, 2020 (source, worldometers [6]).
FIGURE 5.
FIGURE 5.
Unemployment situation in the US due to COVID-19 (source, US Department of Labor [7]).
FIGURE 6.
FIGURE 6.
N-Grams.
FIGURE 7.
FIGURE 7.
Tweets grouped by device type.
FIGURE 8.
FIGURE 8.
Progression of sentiments: trust, anticipation, sadness and fear.
FIGURE 9.
FIGURE 9.
Positive and negative sentiment about reopening.
FIGURE 10.
FIGURE 10.
Sentiment analysis of new normal scenarios.
FIGURE 11.
FIGURE 11.
Statistical analysis of sentiment values.
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