Comparison of Feelings in The Puppet Masters and Emotions on Twitter during the COVID-19 Pandemic: a quantitative analysis of fear of contagion
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5944/rhd.vol.6.2021.30110Keywords:
Heinlein, The Puppet Masters, Twitter, Sentiment Analysis, PandemicsAbstract
Using text mining techniques, we compare the emotional response at a social level detected by Dubey’s research (2020) during the pan-demic, with the one that appears in one of the iconic novels in science fiction literature: The Puppet Masters (1951), by Robert A. Heinlein. This novel describes a scenario that, in essence, is very similar to the current global health crisis caused by COVID-19. The results show that there is an enormous similar-ity between both emotional patterns. The fact that a novel from almost seventy years ago exhibits an emotional pattern extraordinarily similar to the one observed in society during the pandemic, shows not only Heinlein's ability to give his works verisimilitude, but similarities between anxieties surrounding the Cold War and anxieties surrounding the early stages of the pandemic.
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