Tweet topics and sentiments relating to distance learning among Italian Twitter users

The outbreak of COVID-19 forced a dramatic shift in education, from in-person learning to an increased use of distance learning over the past 2 years. Opinions and sentiments regarding this switch from traditional to remote classes can be tracked in real time in microblog messages promptly shared by Twitter users, who constitute a large and ever-increasing number of individuals today. Given this framework, the present study aims to investigate sentiments and topics related to distance learning in Italy from March 2020 to November 2021. A two-step sentiment analysis was performed using the VADER model and the syuzhet package to understand the overall sentiments and emotions. A dynamic latent Dirichlet allocation model (DLDA) was built to identify commonly discussed topics in tweets and their evolution over time. The results show a modest majority of negative opinions, which shifted over time until the trend reversed. Among the eight emotions of the syuzhet package, ‘trust’ was the most positive emotion observed in the tweets, while ‘fear’ and ‘sadness’ were the top negative emotions. Our analysis also identified three topics: (1) requests for support measures for distance learning, (2) concerns about distance learning and its application, and (3) anxiety about the government decrees introducing the red zones and the corresponding restrictions. People’s attitudes changed over time. The concerns about distance learning and its future applications (topic 2) gained importance in the latter stages of 2021, while the first and third topics, which were ranked highly at first, started a steep descent in the last part of the period. The results indicate that even if current distance learning ends, the Italian people are concerned that any new emergency will bring distance learning back into use again.