Irish Attitudes Toward COVID Tracker App & Privacy: Sentiment Analysis on Twitter and Survey Data

Pintu Lohar, Guodong Xie, Malika Bendechache, Rob Brennan, Edoardo Celeste, Ramona Trestian, Irina Tal

Research output: Chapter in Book or Conference Publication/ProceedingConference Publicationpeer-review

15 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Contact tracing apps used in tracing and mitigating the spread of COVID-19 have sparked discussions and controversies worldwide. The major concerns in relation to these apps are around privacy. Ireland was in general praised for the design of its COVID tracker app, and the transparency through which privacy issues were addressed. However, the "voice"of the Irish public was not really heard or analysed. This study aimed to analyse the Irish public sentiment towards privacy and COVID tracker app. For this purpose we have conducted sentiment analysis on Twitter data collected from public Twitter accounts from Republic of Ireland. We collected COVID-19 related tweets generated in Ireland over a period of time from January 1, 2020 up to December 31, 2020 in order to perform sentiment analysis on this data set. Moreover, the study performed sentiment analysis on the feedback received from a national survey on privacy conducted in Republic of Ireland. The findings of the study reveal a significant criticism towards the app that relate to privacy concerns, but other aspects of the app as well. The findings also reveal some positive attitude towards the fight against COVID-19, but these are not necessarily related to the technological solutions employed for this purpose. The findings of the study contributed to the formulation of useful recommendations communicated to the relevant Irish actors.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication16th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security, ARES 2021
Publisher Association for Computing Machinery
ISBN (Electronic)9781450390514
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 17 Aug 2021
Externally publishedYes
Event16th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security, ARES 2021 - Virtual, Online, Austria
Duration: 17 Aug 202120 Aug 2021

Publication series

NameACM International Conference Proceeding Series

Conference

Conference16th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security, ARES 2021
Country/TerritoryAustria
CityVirtual, Online
Period17/08/2120/08/21

Keywords

  • COVID-19
  • privacy
  • Sentiment Analysis
  • tracker app

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Irish Attitudes Toward COVID Tracker App & Privacy: Sentiment Analysis on Twitter and Survey Data'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this