Qatar as full island overnight: Psychological and social consequences of blockade as reflected in the social media

Abstract

The GCC crisis in which Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Bahrain have closed land, sea and air borders going into and from Qatar imposed a host of psychosocial stressors on both Qatari and non-Qatari citizens. This ongoing crisis is contributing to psychological and social problems at both the individual and community levels. Furthermore, pressures are placed on psychological, social, and mental health resources available in Qatar. Therefore, the current economic and political situation calls for a need to assess the resultant psychosocial effects at different levels (individuals families, and communities) and types (emotional, psychological, and social). One method to empirically identify such psychosocial changes emergent from the crisis is to test individuals' reactions in social media, such as Twitter. Methodology: A total of 1238 tweets were collected over a period of 90 days using https:/birdiq.net, 10 thematic representations were codified from 780 tweets. All tweets posted since the blockade started in June 5, 2017 contained a combination of 131 negative words. The 'bad words' were grouped into 10 clusters representing negative emotions. Findings: The results indicated that since the blockade, Qatari residents have begun to use an increasing amount of negative words in their Twitter profiles, indicating adverse tendencies towards the Gulf crisis. Using ten-day intervals up to the point in which this data was collected, significant changes have been observed in the ways in which people expressed themselves on Twitter. These findings are analyzed in the light of literature on the psychological impact of siege blockade and isolation on populations.