EALL interdisciplinary research team finds opposition to face masks amplified by media
The U.S. stood out as the country where masking to prevent the spread of COVID-19 was a divisive issue. How divisive was it? We analyzed 412,959 Twitter hashtags about masking and found a shouty rhetorical polarization on the issue; but it wasn’t nearly a shouting “match” because mask supporters wildly outnumbered resisters whose insults and disinformation couldn’t penetrate the pro-mask echo chamber. In short, the Twitterverse was overwhelmingly in favor of the greater good. That’s a message of hope.
My team is passionate about real-world linguistic research and the interdisciplinary challenges and opportunities that it affords us as researchers. We had a lot of fun with this project. See the below link for the full article.