Exploring Public Responses to Government’s COVID-19 Pandemic Policies

The ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has challenged governments worldwide and approaches to combating the spread maintaining livelihoods have ranged significantly. purpose study is a) investigate whether social media, specifically Twitter, can be used identify topics discussion regarding governments’ COVID-19 policies, and; b) those discussions interpreted in a way that support making policy decisions. Real-time public responses these policies are matter interest, as understanding content attitudes expressed towards government development more grounded solutions for large-scale issues. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) alongside Valence Aware Dictionary sEntiment Reasoning (VADER) sentiment analyzer. Text data from two different jurisdictions examined side by side. Oxford Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) standardize discussions. results found that: Individuals tweeted most frequently passionately about case death rates their jurisdictions. Particularly with respect vulnerable populations, such long term care, nursing homes, health workers, Tweets frustrations communication, length implementation, or lack rationale behind suggesting communicated delivered impacts individuals’ sentiments.