2nd Italian Conference on Economic Statistics (ICES 2024), Statistical Analysis of Complex Economic Data: Recent Developments and Applications, Book of Short Papers

During 2022, the energy crisis has emerged as a predominant subject in public discourse, extensively covered across various media outlets. Social networks have played a pivotal role in this context, providing individuals with a platform to actively engage in and contribute to the ongoing debate. This study examines a collection of Italian language messages, shared on Twitter, to comprehend platform users’ perceptions of the energy crisis and its related aspects. Our focus is primarily on identifying the most debated topics, achieved through the application of unsupervised topic modelling. A total of five salient topics are identified and then categorized into themes, including energy markets dynamics, Ukraine crisis, energy supplies, Italian politics and household energy consumption.