Unveiling Public Sentiments in Crisis: The EHDSAF Approach to Dark Social Media Data during the 2010 Pakistan Flood

Abstract

The flood in Pakistan has become one of the severe natural disasters in the country that has killed millions of people and made a wide impact on the economy, social life, and environment of the region. However, while the focus was mostly on the ground response, human emotions, and sentiments, which were shared on social media, known as dark social media data, were left untapped. In this research, federated querying involving the proposed approach EHDSAF (Enhanced Hybrid Dark Social Analytical Framework) is employed to aggregate and analyze unstructured social media data on the 2010 flood disaster. Thus, using the proposed approach, we reveal the unconscious emotions of people in different regions and aged within Pakistan. The study shows the ability to consistently monitor the emotional status of the population, differences in positive, neutral, and negative attitudes depending on the region and age category. These findings suggest a more profound understanding of the process of communication of the experiences and reactions during the crisis and provide the information that may prove useful for strategizing the future disaster management and the carrying out of humanitarian interventions.