The Practice of Emergency Gatewatching During the First Phase of the Pandemic. An Analysis Through the Tweets in Italian, Spanish, French and German

This chapter examines the reactions of Italian, Spanish, French and German citizens through the comments left on Twitter. Italy, Spain, France and Germany were the first four European nations to be affected by the virus and to implement measures to contain the contagion such as the lockdown. Through the merged method of Emotional text mining, citizens’ reactions are clustered and sentiment analysis is carried out on them. The tweets reveal a concern for the crisis that is not only health, but also economic, political and social.