Authors:
Luciana Oliveira
1
and
Joana Azevedo
2
Affiliations:
1
CEOS.PP ISCAP Polytechnic of Porto, Rua Jaime Lopes Amorim s/n, Matosinhos, Portugal
;
2
ISCAP Polytechnic of Porto, Rua Jaime Lopes Amorim s/n, Matosinhos, Portugal
Keyword(s):
Social Media, Facebook, Covid-19, Media Coverage, Audience, Emotion Detection, Controversy.
Abstract:
The outburst of the COVID-19 pandemic was accompanied by a steeply rise of worldwide media coverage of the phenomena, in which social media were deemed as critical platforms and became a popular place to receive and share information, as well as express personal views. In this paper, we present the preliminary results of an ongoing work devoted to analysing the media coverage of the COVID-19 outburst in Portugal (March-May 2020), the subsequent emotional engagement of audiences and the entropy-based emotional controversy generated. Using a cross-sectional descriptive methodology, we analyse the activity of the three major news outlets in the country for the category of general news. Our results reveal three distinct profiles of media coverage, negativity as the core engine for interacting with news and spreading information, negative and volatile Facebook reactions (“Angry”, “Haha” and “Wow”) as main inputs for controversy, prevailing on COVID-19 news, and a general tendency of audie
nces to share controversial news.
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