A view on sentiment in the Italy of Instagram during the Covid-19 pandemic

The tale of #andràtuttobene

Abstract

The research proposes a sentiment analysis based on a collection of Instagram users’ post published during the lockdown period in Italy, caused by the Covid–19 pandemic. The corpus is constituted by all the posts containing the hashtag #andràtuttobene, published on Instagram on May 4, May 18 and June 3, 2020. Our research proposes a view on the pandemic phenomenon on a national, regional and provincial scale. Thanks to a multidisciplinary approach, we analyzed different languages and expressions constituting the posts and provide a set of procedures revealing different polarity trends for each kind of expression used. The aim is to put in shape the pandemic phenomenon through a selection of linguistic relevance and to propose a single comprehensive measure. The quantitative and qualitative approach required computational linguistics skills together with visualization techniques, prerogative of design. The general framework is a specific semiotics on digital media and syncretic texts.