Pandemic Culture Wars: Partisan Differences in the Moral Language of COVID-19 Discussions

Understand

Effective response to pandemics requires coordinated adoption of mitigation measures, like masking and quarantines, to curb a virus's spread.

• However, as the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated, political divisions can hinder consensus on the appropriate response.
• To better understand these divisions, our study examines a vast collection of COVID-19-related tweets.
• We focus on five contentious issues: coronavirus origins, lockdowns, masking, education, and vaccines.