Implied and Explicit Information on the COVID-19 Perception in Spanish, German, and Russian Social Media

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic radically changed people’s lives and the state of affairs in all spheres of life and transformed environmental ideas, social problems at the micro and macroeconomic levels, and the market mechanism to maintain economic justice. The pandemic consequences have exacerbated individualism, intersectionality, diversity, and inclusiveness issues. Disproportionate risks and worsened outlooks have been observed for socially and economically vulnerable groups. The present cross-cultural study discusses the content of social media on the COVID-19 perception by Spanish, German, and Russian-speaking actors, applying a multimodal approach and using neural network technologies and text analyses. The data analysis made it possible to identify common and distinctive features of communicative actors’ perception of various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the identity of explicitly expressed issues, the implicit information for the three types of users was significantly different, reflected in the dissimilar course and evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic around the world, shedding light on their cultural and political reasons. © 2022 Universidad de La Sabana. All rights reserved.