Unmasking the Twitter Discourses on Masks During the COVID-19 Pandemic: User Cluster–Based BERT Topic Modeling Approach

Weiai Wayne Xu   ¹ , PhD ;   Jean Marie Tshimula   ² , PhD ;   Ève Dubé   ^{3, 4} , PhD ;   Janice E Graham   ⁵ , PhD ;   Devon Greyson   ⁶ , PhD ;   Noni E MacDonald   ⁵ , MD ;   Samantha B Meyer   ⁷ , PhD

¹ Department of Communication, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, United States

² Department of Computer Science, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada

³ Axe maladies infectieuses et immunitaires, Centre de Recherche du CHU de Québec, Laval University, Quebec City, QC, Canada

⁴ Direction des risques biologiques et de la santé au travail, Institut National de Santé Publique du Québec, Quebec, QC, Canada

⁵ Department of Pediatrics, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada

⁶ School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

⁷ School of Public Health Sciences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada