About Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
The pandemic has changed us. We’re processing new feelings together every day. We’ve watched data give shape to the invisible virus — where it is, who it affects, how it moves. But that data ignores human emotions. This is an experiment to trace the emotional waves of the pandemic. The ways we grieve, find solace, and move forward.
Watching the pandemic through an epidemiologist’s lens and learning concepts like “social distancing” and “herd immunity” keeps us safe. But it overlooks our humanity. It’s more important than ever to remember and celebrate that we’re human. Human feelings, to us, are the defining data of this pandemic.
This project is about hardship, hope, and the collective experience. Things that have changed, things that haven’t, and things that may still. This is an unprecedented challenge, but we are resilient — yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
To honor the human story behind COVID-19, we used Twitter to trace the social impact of the pandemic. We started by isolating the hundreds of thousands of Tweets per month that dealt with COVID. Then we sorted those into 10 topics, which give structure to our story. Finally, we used Artificial Intelligence and IBM Watson’s Tone Analyzer to map our Tweets to four unique sentiments: fear, joy, sadness, and confidence, giving you another way to process the data.
Exploring our circular timeline will reveal how major events have shaped the conversation, how our shared humanity creates patterns, and how feelings have evolved (and continue to evolve) as the situation and our understanding of it have changed. When you’re finished exploring, you’re invited to use the hashtag #NFBTomorrow to add your own wishes, sentiments, and stories to the collective chronicle.
Jam3
Production
Leslie Uy
Alex Predusel
UX Design
Cathy Cong
Alexander Levstein
Tiago Furquim
Development
Sukh Gill
Iran Reyes
Wenchen Li
Tom Slezakowski
Marcelo Rodriguez
Bonnie Pham
Alejandro Mesa Suarez
Michael Da Silva
Creative
Pablo Vio
Laura Cortes
Steffen Christiansen
Alexandra Hook
Pedro Barroso
Raphael Mendes
Rafa Cezar
Strategy
Mel Eshaghbeigi
Quality Assurance
Tomas Severo
Bruno Fioritto
Francisco Abal
National Film Board of Canada
Rob McLaughlin
Janine Steele
Victoria Angell
Jasmine Pullukatt
Johanna Lessard
Katja de Bock
Magalie Boutin
Catherine Perreault
Sergiu Raul Suciu
Peter Kallionitis
Oleksandra Synytsyna
John Christou
Music
"Circular As Our Way"
Twitter Privacy
The Tweet you will post on your Twitter account under the hashtag “#nfbtomorrow” will be collected by the National Film Board of Canada, pursuant to the National Film Act, and published on this website as part of the “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow” project. Future users of this website will be able to view your Tweet during their experience of the “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow” project. Please note that for the purposes of this project, Tweets are collected using a Twitter API, and you can correct or remove your Tweet from this website by editing or removing the original post from your Twitter account. All personal information collected by the National Film Board of Canada is protected by the Privacy Act. You have the right to access your personal information under the Act at any time, as well as the right to file a complaint with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada regarding the handling of your personal information.