  The outburst and proliferation of the COVID-19 pandemic, together with the
subsequent social distancing measures, have raised massive challenges in almost
all domains of public and private life around the globe. The stay-at-home
movement has pushed the news audiences into social networks, which, in turn,
has become the most prolific field for receiving and sharing news updates, as
well as for public expression of opinions, concerns and feelings about the
pandemic. Public opinion is a critical aspect in analysing how the information
and events impact peoples lives, and research has shown that social media data
may be promising in understanding how people respond to health risks and social
crisis, which are the feelings they tend to share and how they are adapting to
unforeseen circumstances that threaten almost all societal spheres. This paper
presents results from a social media analysis of 61532 news headlines posted by
the major daily news outlet in Portugal, Sic Noticias, on Facebook, from
January to December 2020, focusing on the issues attention cycle and audiences
emotional response to the COVID news outburst. This work adds to the emergent
body of studies examining public response to the coronavirus pandemic on social
media data.
