Has sentiment returned to the pre-pandemic level? A sentiment analysis using U.S. college subreddit data from 2019 to...

Area of Science:

• Social Sciences
• Psychology
• Data Science

Background:

• The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted individual and societal emotional states.
• A return to pre-pandemic activities prompts an examination of evolving public sentiment.
• Understanding sentiment shifts is crucial for assessing societal well-being post-crisis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze changes in public sentiment from pre-pandemic through the post-emergency period.
• To determine if current sentiment levels have returned to pre-pandemic baselines.
• To quantify the temporal evolution of sentiment and influencing factors.

Main Methods:

• Collected Reddit data from U.S. university communities across 2019-2022.
• Utilized Robustly Optimized BERT pre-training approach (RoBERTa) and Graph Attention Network (GAT) for sentiment prediction.
• Employed generalized linear mixed-effects models to assess sentiment trends and school-level impacts.

Main Results:

• Negative sentiment odds were significantly higher in 2020 (25%), 2021 (7.3%), and 2022 (6.3%) compared to 2019.
• Statistical significance was maintained at the 5% level with multiplicity-adjusted p-values.
• These findings quantify the persistent elevation of negative sentiment post-pandemic.

Conclusions:

• Sentiment composition shows a partial recovery in the post-pandemic-emergency era.
• Results align with expectations, detailing sentiment evolution from 2019 to 2022.
• The study quantifies sentiment changes in a specific sub-population during the pandemic transition.