Journal of Psycholinguistic Research · Vol. 50 · 2021

How Do
Arab Tweeters
Perceive COVID-19?

Bacem A. Essam · Muhammad S. Abdo

0 Arabic tweets
0 Tokens analyzed
0 Weeks studied
0 Discourse themes
Corpus Linguistics Arabic Twitter LIWC-2015 Stylo / R Attribution Theory Feb–Apr 2020

What Arab Tweeters
Talked About

Fifteen discourse themes manually annotated from the top 1,000 keywords by two independent linguists. Click any theme to explore its content and an example tweet.

The Psychology
Behind the Words

LIWC-2015 applied to the Arabic corpus using a custom-translated Arabic dictionary reveals stable analytical structure alongside intense negative affect.

Summary Variables

Dominant Psychological Categories

"Arab tweeters displayed affective psychological processes more than any psychological category. The tweets were also overwhelmed with negative emotions and sadness. Religion appeared among the top five psychological traits."
Core finding — Essam & Abdo (2021), p. 515
Analytical Note
Analytical thinking remained stably high throughout all 12 weeks, indicating that tweeters maintained logical, hierarchical thought patterns even under acute panic — rather than regressing to emotional, narrative-style expression.

Twelve Weeks of
Discourse Change

Stylo cluster analysis grouped weekly tweet files into distinct phases. Click on any week or drag the slider to explore how discourse evolved from distant observation to pandemic fatigue.

Active phase
Distant Observation
WEEK 1
1 Feb 2020Mid-March30 Apr 2020

Stylo PCA schematic (PC1 vs PC2)

Countries That Shaped
the Discourse

Word size reflects corpus frequency. Country mentions reflect mortality tracking, geopolitical blame, conspiracy framing, and regional health concerns. Hover to explore.

Hover over a country to explore its discourse role

How Tweeters Explained
the Pandemic

Attribution theory frames how Arabic-speaking users assigned causal responsibility for COVID-19. Select a target to explore the discourse patterns the study identified.

From Tweets to
Psycholinguistic Insight

What the Corpus
Revealed