Resumo

People around the world are struggling to manage their lives, their thoughts, and their plans because of the Coronavirus pandemic disease (COVID-19). Therefore, it is important to highlight a crucial role that technologies play in the population’s day-to-day lives, mainly because of people use of technologies and social networks to get information about what is happening outside their houses. The direct impact caused by technologies is the ones that help in framing strategies to reduce the infection, to assist in the health care facilities, and to support the society to function as one.

The amount of information that is generated about COVID-19 is colossal mainly because of 24/7 news coverage, televised press conferences provided by political leaders and health authorities, as well as new analysis, debates on social media posts. Hence, our research problem is “How Brazilian Health Department communications impact the emotions of users who follow them on their official Facebook page?” To answer this question, we analyzed the comments posted on the Brazilian Health Department’s official Facebook page and sought to understand the population’s emotions at the pandemic beginning.

In the last decades, the ways that people and public organizations communicate have been changing. In this case, Government Social Media Accounts (GSMAs) are gaining space and enable local governments to communicate relevant information, extended services, and garner feedback and ideas about government operations and actions. When the government employs social media to communicate, it is important to offer a participatory and a collaborative structure where a collective knowledge can be built and, simultaneously, can create a strong relationship that is developed by trustworthy information.

This research collected empirical data between February 26, 2020, and March 29, 2020, from the Brazilian Health Department Facebook page. The procedures were conducted in five steps as follows: (1) analysis of published posts on Facebook and data collection, (2) categorization of the published posts and content analysis, (3) descriptive analysis, (4) sentimental analysis using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software, version 2015, and (5) results description and data report.

Foremost, present research shows the importance in examining online discussions about communication strategies and public politics during a pandemic crisis, like COVID-19. In addition, it allows the comprehension of audiences' emotions generated by the content from the Brazilian Health Department posts on its Facebook official page. This research demonstrates that health institutions, such as government authorities, should recognize the usage of Facebook and other social media to better communicate their messages and to maintain a continuous interaction with their relevant public.

Nowadays people as well as both private and public organizations are communicating with each other in different ways, a process that is possible given the technology advances and their use in communication. Therefore, the present research contributes to the comprehension of the social media role in the information dissemination about the COVID-19 pandemic by using sentiment analysis. It also helps to understand the impact of the Brazilian Health Department in its audience's emotions perceptions.

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