Expressions of emotions and social behavior around COVID19 on Twitter in Spain

Methods:

• We analysed 445 million tweets from users located in Spain by Crimson Hexagon. Only original tweets (no retweets) in Spanish and from users with a number of followers between 100 and 100.000 (to remove spam and media)
• For anxiety, tweet text is matched for anxiety terms from the LIWC lexicon. LIWC is a standard methodology in psychology for text analysis that includes validated lexica in Spanish.
• Similarly, tweet text was matched to a list of prosocial terms used in previous research, including for example words related to helping, empathy, cooperating, sharing, volunteering, and donating. We excluded words referring to (1) health, (2) service (mostly comments about the public services and availability of other services during the Corona-crisis), and (3) sharing words. We did this to avoid confounds with non-prosocial tweets about Covid-19 related health- and other services, and about sharing of links/tweets/videos, etc.
• Marked dates during the Covid-19 outbreak are taken from Wikipedia.

Anxiety

In both figures below, the lines indicate the following events:

• Purple: Violent protests at the airport in Barcelona in response to the sentencing of nine Catalan independence leaders from October 14th 2019 onwards.
• Yellow: Christmas and New Years eve
• Green: First Covid19 case on 2020-01-31
• Orange: First death from Covid-19 on 2020-02-13
• Turquois: Nationwide lockdown on 2020-03-14

Percent of tweets containing anxiety-related terms

Percent change in anxiety-related tweets relative to the average level in 2019

The figure below shows the difference to the average amount of anxiety-related tweets in 2019 (i.e. the baseline) on a logarithmic scale. Taking into account the baseline level makes emotion levels comparable across countries, and shows how much emotions change from their usual level expressed in percent. A value of zero corresponds to the average level in 2019, and everything above or below to an increase or decrease in comparison to this level.

Observations for anxiety

• A typical day in Spain shows a frequency of anxiety terms in Twitter of about 4.1%.
• The lowest level of anxiety is observed during New Years eve.
• The highest peak in the period we analysed corresponds to protests at the airport in Barcelona after the sentencing of Catalan independence leaders in October 2019. As the protests turned more and more violent over a period of 5 days and led to the cancellation of about 200 flights, up to 6% of tweets expressed anxiety.
• When the first case and first death occured, expressions of anxiety were still at their usual levels. They only start rising from March 7th onwards, which may correspond to people becoming personally concerned.
• Starting in between 9-14 March, the governments of Madrid, La Rioja and the Basque municipality of Vitoria-Gasteiz enforced social distancing measures like the closing of schools, universities, bars and restaurants. With about 5% (an increase of 35% compared to 2019), anxiety levels reach their second highest peak during the analysed time period. This peak follows the declaration of the nationwide emergency state and lockdown on 13 March.

Prosocial behavior since the outbreak of Covid-19

In most countries in which expressions of anxiety have risen since the outbreak of Covid-19, expressions of empathy, willingness to support each other and cooperate (in short, prosocial behavior) have increased as well. The increase begins at different moments in different countries, probably depending on which information people had about Covid-19 in other countries, and on which measures were communicated in what way by their governments.

In the plot below, the lines indicate the following events:

• Pink: Right-wing initiative for opting out from sexual education for children on 2020-01-18.
• Green: First Covid19 case on 2020-01-31
• Orange: First death from Covid-19 on 2020-02-13
• Grey: 9 March 2020: Since the outbreak of Covid-19, the day on which levels of prosociality in tweets increase above the average level from 2019 and remain high for several days in a row.
• Turquois: Nationwide lockdown on 2020-03-14

Observations for prosocial behavior

• Levels of prosociality expressed in tweets started increasing above the average from 2019 on 9 March, shortly before the start of the nationwide lockdown on 14 March 2020 (likely when it was announced). They increased by about 20-25% above the average from 2019.
• A smaller peak on 18 January 2020 is related to protest against an initiative of Spain’s most right-wing party, to allow parents to opt out from sexual education for their children.

Conclusions

• Since the outbreak of Covid-19, levels of anxiety and worry expressed in tweets have risen from about their typical level after the announcement of the nationwide lockdown measures. Only violent protests as part of the Catalan independence movement have led to higher levels of anxiety so far.
• It seems that Covid-19 only received attention a while after the first case and the first death occured.
• Tweets referring to prosocial behaviors (helping, sharing, empathy, cooperation, …) have sharply increased compared to 2019 since 9 March, shortly before the onset of measures against the outbreak of Covid-19. They have remained at this high level since then.
• Our results suggest that people in Spain are not only afraid of the consequences of the outbreak of Covid-19, but are also more willing to support each other in times of crisis.

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