  Context. The lockdown orders established in multiple countries in response to
the Covid-19 pandemics are arguably one of the most widespread and deepest
shock experienced by societies in recent years. Studying their impact trough
the lens of social media offers an unprecedented opportunity to understand the
susceptibility and the resilience of human activity patterns to large-scale
exogenous shocks. Firstly, we investigate the changes that this upheaval has
caused in online activity in terms of time spent online, themes and emotion
shared on the platforms, and rhythms of content consumption. Secondly, we
examine the resilience of certain platform characteristics, such as the daily
rhythms of emotion expression. Data. Two independent datasets about the French
cyberspace: a fine-grained temporal record of almost 100 thousand YouTube
videos and a collection of 8 million Tweets between February 17 and April 14,
2020. Findings. In both datasets we observe a reshaping of the circadian
rhythms with an increase of night activity during the lockdown. The analysis of
the videos and tweets published during lockdown shows a general decrease in
emotional contents and a shift from themes like work and money to themes like
death and safety. However, the daily patterns of emotions remain mostly
unchanged, thereby suggesting that emotional cycles are resilient to exogenous
shocks.
