Sentiment and emotional analysis of risk perception in the Herculaneum Archaeological Park during Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

This paper proposes a methodology for sentiment analysis with emphasis on the emotional aspects of people visiting the Herculaneum Archaeological Park. The methodology provides a valuable means of continuous feedback on perceived risk of the site. A semantic analysis on Twitter text messages provides input to the risk management team with which they can respond immediately mitigating any apparent risk and reducing the perceived risk. In addition, we analyse the sentiments of people of such a cultural heritage before and during the Covid pandemic. Whilst suffering from the disease, equally people suffered due to loneliness from isolation as declared by the World Health Organisation. Despite such conditions, people’s sentiments demonstrated a positive effect from the online discussions on the Herculaneum site. This is what we have demonstrated in this work through sentiment analysis.