The Role of UGC (User-Generated Content) Data for Collaborative Learning: Identifying Tourism Hot Topics During the Pandemic

Abstract

Lockdowns and physical distancing measures due to COVID‐19 have entailed an unprecedent disruption on the tourism industry, which has resulted in the cancelation of many in-person trips in the wake of the pandemic. In view of COVID-19 spread, many worldwide tourism companies have been deciding what measures to adopt so as to limit face to face contacts. Besides, tourists are seeking services that fulfil sanitary protocols as well as experiences that cheer them up. Social media has become not just an entertainment tool but rather a socializing channel that is employed on a daily basis by individuals, companies, organizations, governments due to the vast benefits they get from it. Twitter has been identified as the most popular microblog platform, and a reliable source for examining and studying the industry’s behavior. It is unknown which tourism topics have been predominantly discussed in social media. The discussion identifies the major themes using User-Generated Content (UGC) published on Twitter. A dataset of tweets was employed to classify the tourism categories most discussed from the 30 November 2020 to 25 January 2021, using a Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model. We applied sentiment analysis using machine learning in Python to distinguish between the positive, negative and neutral feelings expressed in the tweets. The goal is to explore of these sentiments coincide with sustainable development goals, boost collaborative learning and expand tourism UGC during a health crisis.