Analysis of Tweets Related with Physical Activity During COVID-19 Outbreak

Year 2021, Volume: 5 Issue: 1, 42 - 48, 26.02.2021

Tolga Şahin , Hikmet Gümüş , Celal Gençoğlu

https://doi.org/10.30621/jbachs.869506

Cited By: 3

Abstract

Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic affected the daily lifestyle and habits around the worldwide. Besides the impact of coronavirus on social life and canceling of gyms limited physical activity and exercise. The aim of this study was to analysis of tweet numbers and attitudes related with physical activity during the COVID-19 pandemic regarding the timeline of Turkey outbreak.
Methods: Twitter query performed in Turkish tweets between 1st of January and 14th of May 2020 including keywords “exercise” or “physical or activity” or “fitness” or “plates” or “gymnastics” or “inactive”. Collected tweet data sent to Google cloud natural language API for estimation of sentiment score. Tweets assigned as non-COVID period (1st of Jan-14th Mar; n=74 days) and COVID period (14th Mar-14th May; n=61 days) according to the prognosis of the pandemic in Turkey.
Results: The number of tweets and both positive and negative sentiments score of tweets significantly increased in the COVID period in comparison to the non-COVID period. There was a significant decreased sentiment scores in COVID period when compared to non-COVID period however, during the COVID period, no significant differences found between forced isolation days and non-forced isolation days.
Discussion: These results suggest that people had more leisure time and realized the importance of being active for a healthy lifestyle during this lockdown period in Turkey then both performed exercises and posted to Twitter more often. Current findings also showed that social media is a platform for promoting physical activity and exercise via peoples’ necessity to share and get interaction.

Keywords

covid19, physical activity, twitter, sentiment analysis, COVID-19 pandemic

References

• Health Ministry RoT. COVID-19 information. https://COVID19bilgi.saglik.gov.tr/tr/2020 [cited 2020 11th June].
• Burcu Tokuç GV. Medical Education in Turkey in Time of COVID-19. Balkan Medical Journal2020. https://doi.org/10.4274/balkanmedj.galenos.2020.2020.4.003
• Gössling S, Scott D, Hall CM. Pandemics, tourism and global change: a rapid assessment of COVID-19. Journal of Sustainable Tourism. 2020:1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2020.1758708
• Haleem A, Javaid M, Vaishya R. Effects of COVID 19 pandemic in daily life. Curr Med Res Pract. 2020 Apr 3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmrp.2020.03.011
• Cellini N, Canale N, Mioni G, Costa S. Changes in sleep pattern, sense of time and digital media use during COVID-19 lockdown in Italy. J Sleep Res. 2020 May 15:e13074. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/284mr
• Hemphill NM, Kuan MTY, Harris KC. Reduced Physical Activity During COVID-19 Pandemic in Children With Congenital Heart Disease. Can J Cardiol. 2020 May 5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cjca.2020.04.038
• Zhang J, Brackbill D, Yang S, Centola D. Efficacy and causal mechanism of an online social media intervention to increase physical activity: Results of a randomized controlled trial. Prev Med Rep. 2015;2:651-7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmedr.2015.08.005
• Achen RM. Using Facebook and Twitter to Encourage Physical Activity: Are College Students Connecting with Campus Recreation on Social Media? A Pilot Study. Recreational Sports Journal. 2018;39(2):132-43. https://doi.org/10.1123/rsj.2014-0046
• Lippi G, Henry BM, Bovo C, Sanchis-Gomar F. Health risks and potential remedies during prolonged lockdowns for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Diagnosis (Berl). 2020a May 26;7(2):85-90. https://doi.org/10.1515/dx-2020-0041
• Lippi G, Henry BM, Sanchis-Gomar F. Physical inactivity and cardiovascular disease at the time of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Eur J Prev Cardiol. 2020b Jun;27(9):906-8. https://doi.org/10.1177/2047487320916823
• Chen P, Mao L, Nassis GP, Harmer P, Ainsworth BE, Li F. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): The need to maintain regular physical activity while taking precautions. J Sport Health Sci. 2020 Mar;9(2):103-4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jshs.2020.02.001
• Batool R, Khattak AM, Maqbool J, Lee S, editors. Precise tweet classification and sentiment analysis. 2013 IEEE/ACIS 12th International Conference on Computer and Information Science (ICIS); 2013: IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICIS.2013.6607883
• Barkur G, Vibha GBKJAjop. Sentiment analysis of nationwide lockdown due to COVID 19 outbreak: Evidence from India. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2020.102089
• Harris JK, Duncan A, Men V, Shevick N, Krauss MJ, Cavazos-Rehg PA. Messengers and Messages for Tweets That Used #thinspo and #fitspo Hashtags in 2016. Prev Chronic Dis. 2018 Jan 4;15:E01. https://doi.org/10.5888/pcd15.170309
• Statista. Twitter: most users by country https://www.statista.com/statistics/242606/number-of-active-twitter-users-in-selected-countries/2020 [16 June 2020].
• Twitter. Tweet of Fahrettin Koca https://twitter.com/drfahrettinkoca/status/1238336845131534336: Twitter, 13 March 2020 [cited 2020 16 June ].
• Margaritis I, Houdart S, El Ouadrhiri Y, Bigard X, Vuillemin A, Duche P. How to deal with COVID-19 epidemic-related lockdown physical inactivity and sedentary increase in youth? Adaptation of Anses' benchmarks. Arch Public Health. 2020;78:52. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13690-020-00432-z
• Pratt M, Varela AR, Salvo D, Kohl III HW, Ding D. Attacking the pandemic of physical inactivity: what is holding us back? : BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and British Association of Sport and Exercise Medicine; 2019. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2019-101392
• Hall G, Laddu DR, Phillips SA, Lavie CJ, Arena RJPiCD. A tale of two pandemics: How will COVID-19 and global trends in physical inactivity and sedentary behavior affect one another? 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pcad.2020.04.005
• Werneck AO, Collings PJ, Barboza LL, Stubbs B, Silva DRJGhp. Associations of sedentary behaviors and physical activity with social isolation in 100,839 school students: The Brazilian Scholar Health Survey. 2019;59:7-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.genhosppsych.2019.04.010
• Pietrobelli A, Pecoraro L, Ferruzzi A, Heo M, Faith M, Zoller T, et al. Effects of COVID-19 Lockdown on Lifestyle Behaviors in Children with Obesity Living in Verona, Italy: A Longitudinal Study. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2020 Apr 30. https://doi.org/10.1002/oby.22861
• Cavallo DN, Tate DF, Ries AV, Brown JD, DeVellis RF, Ammerman AS. A social media-based physical activity intervention: a randomized controlled trial. Am J Prev Med. 2012 Nov;43(5):527-32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2012.07.019
• Mattioli AV, Ballerini Puviani M, Nasi M, Farinetti A. COVID-19 pandemic: the effects of quarantine on cardiovascular risk. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2020 May 5. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41430-020-0646-z
• Dos Reis VL, Culotta A, editors. Using matched samples to estimate the effects of exercise on mental health via twitter. Twenty-Ninth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence; 2015.
• Cinelli M, Quattrociocchi W, Galeazzi A, Valensise CM, Brugnoli E, Schmidt AL, et al. The covid-19 social media infodemic. 2020.
• Brooks SK, Webster RK, Smith LE, Woodland L, Wessely S, Greenberg N, et al. The psychological impact of quarantine and how to reduce it: rapid review of the evidence. 2020. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3532534
• Lima CKT, de Medeiros Carvalho PM, Lima IdAS, de Oliveira Nunes JVA, Saraiva JS, de Souza RI, et al. The emotional impact of Coronavirus 2019-nCoV (new Coronavirus disease). 2020:112915. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2020.112915
• Zhang SX, Wang Y, Rauch A, Wei F. Unprecedented disruption of lives and work: Health, distress and life satisfaction of working adults in China one month into the COVID-19 outbreak. Psychiatry Res. 2020 Jun;288:112958. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2020.112958
• Hiremath P, Suhas Kowshik CS, Manjunath M, Shettar M. COVID 19: Impact of lock-down on mental health and tips to overcome. Asian J Psychiatr. 2020 Apr 10;51:102088. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2020.102088
• Physical Activity Tweets in Turkey during Covid-19. [database on the Internet]. Kaggle. 2020. https://dx.doi.org/10.34740/kaggle/dsv/1245170