Twitter Sentiment Analysis: Caribbean Prime Ministers Response to COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

In today's world, millions of people use social networking and microblogging sites every day to share their views, opinions, and emotions in their daily lives. These sites can become an invaluable source for data mining and can be used effectively to evaluate people's opinion on a product, an entity or perhaps topics of interest. Sentiment Analysis, as it is called, allows us to determine whether the opinions, mood, views, or attitude in a text is either 'positive', 'negative', or 'neutral'. The focus of this study was to analyze the tweets of the top ten English-speaking Caribbean Prime Ministers on Twitter to determine how effective they were in reducing the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak in their territories. The research results provided clear evidence that the negative sentiment towards the virus by the Caribbean leaders was a contributing factor in reducing the number of cases and deaths during the first five months of COVID-19 in the region. The results also found that a correlation exists between the prime ministers' social network and their effectiveness in managing the virus. In addition, the words expressed by the prime ministers in reference to COVID-19 were clear and practical therefore making it easier for the prime ministers to implement strict measures to control the spread of the virus in the region. © 2021 IEEE.