National Mask Mandate in the U.S.:
A Hot Topic, an Old Debate
Project Description
Looking back in time, face masks (and their effectiveness) have been questioned even during the 1918 Influenza pandemic. Over a hundred years ago, masks were a hot topic debate, as they are now. In fact, during that same 1918 pandemic, seven cities put a mask mandate in effect.
Currently, as COVID-19 cases continue to rise in the U.S., citizens and leaders are again contemplating the effectiveness of face masks. Some states have implemented a mask mandate while others claim that face masks are not worth the effort. Since the start of COVID, face masks have become a powerful political symbol and has aided in polarizing the U.S. even further than what has been seen before. While the majority of the debate surrounding masks online comes from a white audience, O.Y.E. software was tasked with reviewing minority opinions on a National Mask Mandate to fully understand this issue.
This report takes an in-depth look at diverse voices discussing the National Mask Mandate.
Methodology
This analysis was extrapolated from a data set of 109,947 conversations on Twitter, of which 3,244 were from verified U.S. Hispanics and 3,938 were from verified Black Americans. All data was gathered from 08/30/2020-09/29/2020.
