L’OPINIONE ITALIANA SULLA DIDATTICA A DISTANZA ATTRAVERSO UNA ‘SENTIMENT ANALYSIS’ DEI TWEET NEL BIENNIO 2020-2021.

ABSTRACT. In 2020, many efforts have been made to limit the diffusion of COVID-19 infection. Faced with this emergency, everyone's lives were changed through ‘social isolation’. So, starting from March 2020, the Italian school system experienced a massive application of Distance Learning. These changes brought about to a certain degree of tension, which have also accelerated the use of innovative educational tools and led the way for a digitalisation of learning. Natural language processing (NLP) is a very powerful technique for social media data processing. Social media can provide the information to understand public opinions of different social phenomena. This paper implements a Sentiment Analysis over 25,000 Italian tweets talking about distance learning from March 2020 to November 2021. The analysis highlighted significant differences between Italian regions and the change in Sentiment due to the transition from an emergency Distance Learning to the Integrated Digital Learning.