Context

The lockdown orders established in multiple countries in response to the Covid-19 pandemic are arguably one of the most widespread and deepest shock experienced by societies in recent years. Studying their impact trough the lens of social media offers an unprecedented opportunity to understand the susceptibility and the resilience of human activity patterns to large-scale exogenous shocks. Firstly, we investigate the changes that this upheaval has caused in online activity in terms of time spent online, themes and emotion shared on the platforms, and rhythms of content consumption. Secondly, we examine the resilience of certain platform characteristics, such as the daily rhythms of emotion expression.

Data

Two independent datasets about the French cyberspace: a fine-grained temporal record of almost 100 thousand YouTube videos and a collection of 8 million Tweets between February 17 and April 14, 2020.

Findings

In both datasets we observe a reshaping of the circadian rhythms with an increase of night activity during the lockdown. The analysis of the videos and tweets published during lockdown shows a general decrease in emotional contents and a shift from themes like work and money to themes like death and safety. However, the daily patterns of emotions remain mostly unchanged, thereby suggesting that emotional cycles are resilient to exogenous shocks.

中文翻译：

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夜晚的节奏：2020 年春季 Covid-19 锁定期间在线夜间活动和情绪恢复力的增加

语境

多个国家针对 Covid-19 大流行制定的封锁令可以说是近年来社会所经历的最广泛和最深刻的冲击之一。从社交媒体的角度研究它们的影响，为了解人类活动模式对大规模外来冲击的敏感性和弹性提供了前所未有的机会。首先，我们从在线时间、平台上分享的主题和情感以及内容消费的节奏等方面调查了这种剧变对在线活动造成的变化。其次，我们检查了某些平台特征的弹性，例如情绪表达的日常节奏。

数据

关于法国网络空间的两个独立数据集：近 10 万个 YouTube 视频的细粒度时间记录和 2020 年 2 月 17 日至 4 月 14 日期间 800 万条推文的集合。

发现

在这两个数据集中，我们观察到随着锁定期间夜间活动的增加，昼夜节律发生了重塑。对封锁期间发布的视频和推文的分析表明，情感内容普遍减少，并且从工作和金钱等主题转向死亡和安全等主题。然而，情绪的日常模式基本保持不变，从而表明情绪周期对外源性冲击具有弹性。