Looking Back at the Pandemic Onset: Twitter Chatter Reflects Changes in
Alcohol Themes
Abstract
The COVID-19 global pandemic brought with it massive disruptions across
many aspects of daily living including losses of employment and
financial opportunities, reduced access to essential resources, lack of
engagement in social activities, increases in social isolation, and mass
transitions to remote school and work environments. Pre-pandemic
research on events with paralleled community-wide effects has
demonstrated a resulting increase in alcohol use and misuse as a result
of these massive disruptions. However, early research on the impact of
the current global pandemic on alcohol use has painted a complex
picture. The current study utilized social media content (i.e., Twitter)
as a way to investigate the initial impact of the pandemic on our
relationship with alcohol. Analyses were also conducted to determine if
the pandemic resulted in a shift away from typical weekly patterns
related to alcohol use (i.e., increased on weekends vs. weekdays). A 2
(pandemic: pre-pandemic vs. post-pandemic) x 2 (day of week: weekday vs.
weekend) ANCOVA was calculated to predict the prevalence of alcohol
related tweets while controlling for the total number of tweets. The
prevalence of alcohol related tweets significantly increased following
the declaration of the global pandemic, however, the pattern of alcohol
related tweets across the days of the week did not differ as a result of
the pandemic. These results may be a reflection of major shifts in the
psychological and social phenomena associated with alcohol as a result
of the devastating impacts of the global pandemic.