The repository contains the code for the Reddict-Addiction-Study project.
The goal of the project was to investigate how COVID-19 impacted the routines and mindsets of individuals working towards quitting smoking and alcohol consumption by characterizing their discourse on Reddit.
Changes in linguistic patterns between posts/comments made by users before and during COVID were investigated. Methods used to investigate these changes include n-grams, topic shifts, semantic shifts using neural embeddings and graph-based evaluation of semantic shifts. Some of the Data Science and NLP packages used in this project include numpy, pandas, matplotlib, seaborn, nltk, re, and textblob.
Syntax and semantics of the posts were found to be different before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.The topics of discussion changed during the pandemic with more focus on personal aspects and stories while seeking support from the community.
The insights made possible by this combination of resources are important for monitoring the secondary effects on vulnerable communities and informing social programs designed to alleviate these effects. Although this project focused mainly on drinking and smoking, one can expand on it to include other forms of addiction.