Empathy and Hope: Resource Transfer to Model Inter-country Social Media Dynamics [article]

Clay H. Yoo, Shriphani Palakodety, Rupak Sarkar, Ashiqur R. KhudaBukhsh
2021 arXiv   pre-print
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic resulted in significant ramifications for international relations ranging from travel restrictions, global ceasefires, and international vaccine production and sharing agreements. Amidst a wave of infections in India that resulted in a systemic breakdown of healthcare infrastructure, a social welfare organization based in Pakistan offered to procure medical-grade oxygen to assist India – a nation which was involved in four wars with Pakistan in the past few
more » ... In this paper, we focus on Pakistani Twitter users' response to the ongoing healthcare crisis in India. While #IndiaNeedsOxygen and #PakistanStandsWithIndia featured among the top-trending hashtags in Pakistan, divisive hashtags such as #EndiaSaySorryToKashmir simultaneously started trending. Against the backdrop of a contentious history including four wars, divisive content of this nature, especially when a country is facing an unprecedented healthcare crisis, fuels further deterioration of relations. In this paper, we define a new task of detecting supportive content and demonstrate that existing NLP for social impact tools can be effectively harnessed for such tasks within a quick turnaround time. We also release the first publicly available data set at the intersection of geopolitical relations and a raging pandemic in the context of India and Pakistan.
arXiv:2106.12044v1 fatcat:tcavskmnlreeddpbayjg6i6upu