EmoVis – An Interactive Visualization Tool to Track Emotional Trends During Crisis Events

Abstract

The goal of this research is to develop a novel tool that can aid social science researchers in inferring emotional trends over large-scale cultural stressors. We demonstrate the usefulness of the tool in describing the emotional timeline of a major crisis event – the 2017 Charlottesville protests. The tool facilitates understanding of how large-scale cultural stressors yield changes in emotional responses. The timeline tool describes the modulation of emotional intensity with respect to how the Charlottesville event unfolded on Twitter. We have developed multiple features associated with the tool that tailor the presentation of the data, including the ability to focus on single or multiple emotions (e.g., anger and anxiety) and also delineate the timeline based on events that precede crises events, in this case, the Charlottesville protests. By doing so, we can begin to identify potential antecedents to various protest phenomena and their accompanying emotional responses.