Protest Movements in October 2020 in the middle COVID-19 epidemic on the Polish Tweetosphere - epidemiological harm reduction perspective - preliminary analysis
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Protest_Movements_in_October_2020_in_the_in_the_middle_COVID-19_epidemic.pdf (1.88 MB)
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2021
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Abstract
Extensive anti-government protests have been held in Poland in October 2020 related to accumulated social tensions due to COVID-19 pandemic among others. Measures against Coronavirus were not the only reason for demonstrations and protests at this time. For instance farmers organized protests in over 1000 locations across the country. However, pro-choice (abortion) demonstrations gather the highest number of protesters and attention in media. Methods: Tweets in Polish language with hashtags #Strajkkobiet representing pro-choice movement woman's strike (227125), #zajob representing coronascepricism movement (22379), #ProtestRolników for farmers protest (9739) have been collected. Next step was to perform statistical analysis of the time series, Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods such as sentiment analysis techniques and conceptual field analysis, Social Network Analysis (SNA) of the Internet media users connected via their tweets sharing activities. Results: We have identified in each of the protests:-main actors and communities;-key vocabulary, topics and sentiment;-characteristic timeline. For instance majority of users engaged with #Strajkkobiet are teenagers, which are only weakly connected to activists. #ProtestRolników has clear structure of communities of particular interest among protester as farmers, agricultural and rightwing parties as well as pro and anti governmental parties, who are against protests. Anticovid discourse (#Zajob) does not reveal any particular structure and consist of multiple individual protesters. Conclusions: Massive gatherings could catalyze COVID-19 spread and harm reduction policy must be applied. We have profiled users for each protest to effectively reach them with health interventions. The revealed insights shed light on social dynamics in the context of such major dis-ruptive events as COVID-19 pandemic and could serve as a basis for optimization of risk awareness campaigns by the authorities.