Understanding the Initial Rections of Turkish Twitter Users During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

This study aims to evaluate the initial reactions of Turkish social media users to the spread of the COVID-19 disease and the consequent pandemic in Turkey. The primary purpose of this investigation is to provide readers with an understanding of the transformative effects of social media on the dissemination of information and feelings, especially in moments of crisis. Content analysis approach was used for the analysis of the selected tweets with codes and themes. The themes broadly identified by the study included personal opinions, humour or sarcasm, requests and questions, emotional state, information sharing, marketing and spam. The initial reactions of Turkish Twitter users on COVID-19 related primarily to sharing personal thoughts, which included the articulation of personal opinions and the critique of the views of others. The second significant response thread involved humour and sarcasm. The third theme is requests and questions including warnings, suggestions, demands and questions.

Analysis of Public Agenda during Covid-19 Pandemics Based on Turkish and English Tweets Using Nonnegative Matrix Factorization and Hypothesis Testing

“…They present a study written in Turkish language and identify the most common words of positive and negative tweets. Nazlı, Kocaömer, Beşbudak, and Köker [19] use a content analysis approach to analyze reactions of Turkish Twitter users to Covid-19 once the first positive case in Turkey was announced on 11 March 2020. Konakçı, Uran, and Erkin [20] use 160 news articles published between 11 March 2020 and 11 April 2020.…”