Any Publicity is Good Publicity: Positive, Negative and Neutral Tweets Can All Become Trends

Abstract

Anecdotal evidence suggests that Twitter trends are characterised by highly polarised tweets. However, specific experiments intended to measure the correlation between the emergence of a trend and the overall sentiment expressed on it have been few and limited. Thus, we have launched an investigation to ascertain the nature of the relationship between trends and strength of sentiment. As a testbed for our experimentation, we have retrieved a large collection of tweets related to the COVID19 pandemic, in the particular context of the UK Government briefings broadcasted in the media. Our results highlight the presence of a significant percentage of trends with a nearly neutral sentiment. Indeed, there does not seem to be an apparent correlation between trends and polarity.