"Is a game really a reason for people to die?" Sentiment and thematic analysis of Twitter-based discourse on Indonesia soccer stampede

Otobo I Ujah; Chukwuemeka E Ogbu; Russell S Kirby

doi:10.3934/publichealth.2023050

"Is a game really a reason for people to die?" Sentiment and thematic analysis of Twitter-based discourse on Indonesia soccer stampede

AIMS Public Health. 2023 Sep 5;10(4):739-754. doi: 10.3934/publichealth.2023050. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Otobo I Ujah¹, Chukwuemeka E Ogbu¹, Russell S Kirby¹

Affiliation

¹ Chiles Center, College of Public Health, University of South Florida, 33612 Tampa Florida, USA.

Abstract

This study examined discourses related to an Indonesian soccer stadium stampede on 1st October 2022 using comments posted on Twitter. We conducted a lexicon-based sentiment analysis to identify the sentiments and emotions expressed in tweets and performed structural topic modeling to identify latent themes in the discourse. The majority of tweets (87.8%) expressed negative sentiments, while 8.2% and 4.0% of tweets expressed positive and neutral sentiments, respectively. The most common emotion expressed was fear (29.3%), followed by sadness and anger. Of the 19 themes identified, "Deaths and mortality" was the most prominent (15.1%), followed by "family impact". The negative stampede discourse was related to public concerns such as "vigil" and "calls for bans and suspension," while positive discourse focused more on the impact of the stampede. Public health institutions can leverage the volume and rapidity of social media to improve disaster prevention strategies.

Keywords: disaster preparedness; mass gatherings; natural language processing; stampede; twitter.