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Affective Signals and Issue Salience in Swiss Reddit Discourse: Insights on Public Reaction to Government Measures During COVID-19 and the Ukraine Crisis

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  • König, Leonard Maximilian

Abstract

This study explores the interplay of issue salience and affective signals in Swiss public reactions to government measures on the Reddit forum r/Switzerland during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war. Using an Exploratory Data Analysis approach, this study applied topic modeling (BERTopic) to a large corpus of posts (2019-2022) to identify shifts in online public attention and emotional responses, and transformer-based sentiment and emotion analysis to quantify sentiment and discrete emotions as affectives. The results reveal a Swiss online public that is highly responsive to events, with attention shifting rapidly, and whose discourse is deeply imbued with emotional content, predominantly negative in the face of restrictive policies or unsettling international developments. These insights underscore the value of computational social science in unpacking the complexities of online public opinion and offer a foundation for future research into the evolving nature of digital democracy and crisis governance.

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  • König, Leonard Maximilian, 2025. "Affective Signals and Issue Salience in Swiss Reddit Discourse: Insights on Public Reaction to Government Measures During COVID-19 and the Ukraine Crisis," SocArXiv 28exs_v2, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:28exs_v2
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/28exs_v2
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Michaela Fischer & Fabrizio Gilardi, 2023. "Level Playing Field or Politics as Usual? Equalization–Normalization in Direct Democratic Online Campaigns," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(1), pages 43-55.
    2. Michaela Fischer & Fabrizio Gilardi, 2023. "Level Playing Field or Politics as Usual? Equalization–Normalization in Direct Democratic Online Campaigns," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(1), pages 43-55.
    3. Chao Zhang & Ning Ma & Guohui Sun, 2022. "Using Grounded Theory to Identify Online Public Opinion in China to Improve Risk Management—The Case of COVID-19," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(22), pages 1-17, November.
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