Negative emotions spike as coronavirus (covid-19) spread continues, Italy-based AI company found

Expert System is an Italian-based artificial intelligence company specializing in semantics and natural language reading. Today they are monitoring the emotions and general sentiment around the COVID-19 pandemic expressed by people in the US and UK across social media.

The company releases a daily update reflecting the changing attitudes and emotions of the English speaking world and the reasons driving these daily changes. Below is a map of emotions expressed about COVID-19 on social media by people in the US and the UK.

Based on an analysis of around 58,000 social media posts in English over the last 24 hours, “fear,” is the most widespread single emotion, increasing over last Friday. Neutral feelings, which do not express a particular emotion, have reduced over the same period. Instead, the most extreme emotions—fear, sadness, repulsion, suffering, anxiety and hope, love, excitement—are strengthened over a 24-hour period.

Day 12: Expert System and Sociometrica are monitoring the emotions and general sentiment around the COVID-19 pandemic expressed by people in the US and UK across social media.

The map above represents the emotions derived from the semantic analysis of social media content over a 24-hour period. Expert System’s artificial intelligence technology extracts the emotions, which are then analyzed and interpreted by Sociometrica.

Compared to Friday, all negative feelings have increased, from 40.0% to 47.5%; neutral feelings have decreased over the same period, from 36.1% to 30,2%. Positive emotions have also decreased from 23.9% to 22.3%.