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Using Twitter to Understand Humor as Stress Relief during the COVID-19 Outbreak
O'Donnell, Matthew B
O'Donnell, Matthew B
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Abstract
Using humor as a means of deflecting from stress or anxiety is a widely-occurring practice and takes many different forms, well documented in studies of first-responders or emergency service personnel, for example. This paper attempts to quantify this phenomenon in light of the COVID-19 pandemic by analyzing a large body of Tweets between March and June 2020. In the paper, different methods are used to categorize pieces of text and determine whether humor as a form of personal resiliency occurs on social media, how common this is, and how it manifests itself. The paper also analyzes an original survey administered to around 200 respondents to explore more specifically how individuals use humor to respond to stress, particularly dark humor, and what Covid-related topics were sources of humor.
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Date
2021-01-01