New Semester Brings Mixed Feelings in Twitter
Posted by Ying Xiong
Many universities in the U.S. have started the new semester. From January 2 to January 16, 2019, 32,000 tweets mentioned “new semester.” The discussion of the new semester reached the peak on January 7, 2019, when it was the first day of the spring semester for many universities.
“Welcome back” was a frequently used phrase in the context. Universities, libraries, and university facilities’ Twitter accounts sent out greetings and wishes to followers.
Among all the tweets, positive sentiment dominated the on-topic discussion.
The tweets were mixed with positive and negative feelings. Positive words, such as happy, excited, great, best, and good, were showed in the word cloud. Some social media users used the words, such as anxiety, depression, and stress to express their fear and hesitation for the new semester.
The new semester relevant tweets were primarily posted by users from 25-34 years old and 21-24 years old. Surprising, first-year students and sophomores (18-20 years old) were not the most active age groups on the new semester topic. Female users were more active on the new semester topic than male users.
Social media users incorporated many hashtags when they engaged in the new semester topic. #firstdayofschool, #back2school, #backtoschool, and #newsemester were top hashtags on the topic.
