A Twitter narrative of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia

TL;DR

This paper analyzes COVID-19-related Twitter discussions in Australia from 2020 to 2022, using advanced methods to understand discussion dynamics and inform future epidemic management systems.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of Australian COVID-19 Twitter data employing network, topic, sentiment, and causality analyses, advancing understanding of social media's role during crises.

Findings

Insights into discussion patterns during the pandemic

Identification of key topics and sentiments

Understanding of causality in social media discussions

Abstract

Social media platforms contain abundant data that can provide comprehensive knowledge of historical and real-time events. During crisis events, the use of social media peaks, as people discuss what they have seen, heard, or felt. Previous studies confirm the usefulness of such socially generated discussions for the public, first responders, and decision-makers to gain a better understanding of events as they unfold at the ground level. This study performs an extensive analysis of COVID-19-related Twitter discussions generated in Australia between January 2020, and October 2022. We explore the Australian Twitterverse by employing state-of-the-art approaches from both supervised and unsupervised domains to perform network analysis, topic modeling, sentiment analysis, and causality analysis. As the presented results provide a comprehensive understanding of the Australian Twitterverse during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study aims to explore the discussion dynamics to aid the development of future automated information systems for epidemic/pandemic management.