Extracting Stances on Pandemic Measures from Social Media Data

Erik Tjong Kim Sang, Shihan Wang, Marijn Schraagen, Mehdi Dastani

Abstract: Support for national measures against the COVID-19 pandemic can be measured by collecting responses to questionnaires. In this paper we explore a less costly and less time-consuming method: by analyzing social media data. We compare stances regarding anti-pandemic measures extracted from tweets with the questionnaire results provided by the Dutch national health institute RIVM. We find similarities and differences and discuss the results.