Tracking the evolution of crisis processes and mental health on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all aspects of society, not only bringing\nhealth hazards, but also posing challenges to public order, governments and\nmental health. Moreover, it is the first one in history in which people from\naround the world uses social media to massively express their thoughts and\nconcerns. This study aims at examining the stages of crisis response and\nrecovery as a sociological problem by operationalizing a well-known model of\ncrisis stages in terms of a psycho-linguistic analysis. Based on a large\ncollection of Twitter data spanning from March to August 2020 in Argentina, we\npresent a thematic analysis on the differences in language used in social media\nposts, and look at indicators that reveal the different stages of a crisis and\nthe country response thereof. The analysis was combined with a study of the\ntemporal prevalence of mental health conversations across the time span. Beyond\nthe Argentinian case-study, the proposed approach and analyses can be applied\nto any public large-scale data. This approach can provide insights for the\ndesign of public health politics oriented to monitor and eventually intervene\nduring the different stages of a crisis, and thus improve the adverse mental\nhealth effects on the population.\n