scholarly journals Using social media to analyze public psychological status during the recovery period of COVID-19 in China

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fei Jia ◽  
Xiaoguang Liu
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Recovery Period ◽  
Psychological Status ◽  
Development Mode ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Epidemic Development ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract Background During the outbreak, billions of people were eager to get information about COVID-19 through social media. Social media can not only deliver reliable information to the public but can in turn reflect changes in the public’s psychological status. Insight into the public’s hotspots of concern and mental status through media background tools contributes to the formulation of public health policies and the clarification of epidemic development mode. Methods WeChat is the largest social media in China. Taking the recovery period of COVID-19 in China, for example, we collected WeChat Index data and analyzed the public’s concern about the course of COVID-19 and the restoration of emotional tendency through keywords search. Results With the gradual control of the COVID-19 in China, the public psychological status changes from negative to neutral, accompanied by a weakening of negative emotions and an increase in positive emotions. Every obvious inflection point of improvement in social operation is reflected in the increase of public attention and the relaxation of lifestyle. Conclusions Social media can be used to monitor the public psychological status and the development mode and trend of infection in one country during a pandemic.

scholarly journals Chinese Public's Attention to the COVID-19 Epidemic on Social Media: Observational Descriptive Study

10.2196/18825 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. e18825 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuxin Zhao ◽  
Sixiang Cheng ◽  
Xiaoyan Yu ◽  
Huilan Xu
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Public Concern ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Mining System ◽  
The Public ◽  
Source Of Infection ◽  
The Government ◽  
And Control

Background Since the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) epidemic in China in December 2019, information and discussions about COVID-19 have spread rapidly on the internet and have quickly become the focus of worldwide attention, especially on social media. Objective This study aims to investigate and analyze the public’s attention to events related to COVID-19 in China at the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic (December 31, 2019, to February 20, 2020) through the Sina Microblog hot search list. Methods We collected topics related to the COVID-19 epidemic on the Sina Microblog hot search list from December 31, 2019, to February 20, 2020, and described the trend of public attention on COVID-19 epidemic-related topics. ROST Content Mining System version 6.0 was used to analyze the collected text for word segmentation, word frequency, and sentiment analysis. We further described the hot topic keywords and sentiment trends of public attention. We used VOSviewer to implement a visual cluster analysis of hot keywords and build a social network of public opinion content. Results The study has four main findings. First, we analyzed the changing trend of the public’s attention to the COVID-19 epidemic, which can be divided into three stages. Second, the hot topic keywords of public attention at each stage were slightly different. Third, the emotional tendency of the public toward the COVID-19 epidemic-related hot topics changed from negative to neutral, with negative emotions weakening and positive emotions increasing as a whole. Fourth, we divided the COVID-19 topics with the most public concern into five categories: the situation of the new cases of COVID-19 and its impact, frontline reporting of the epidemic and the measures of prevention and control, expert interpretation and discussion on the source of infection, medical services on the frontline of the epidemic, and focus on the worldwide epidemic and the search for suspected cases. Conclusions Our study found that social media (eg, Sina Microblog) can be used to measure public attention toward public health emergencies. During the epidemic of the novel coronavirus, a large amount of information about the COVID-19 epidemic was disseminated on Sina Microblog and received widespread public attention. We have learned about the hotspots of public concern regarding the COVID-19 epidemic. These findings can help the government and health departments better communicate with the public on health and translate public health needs into practice to create targeted measures to prevent and control the spread of COVID-19.

scholarly journals Chinese Public Attention to COVID-19 Epidemic: Based on Social Media

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuxin Zhao ◽  
Huilan Xu
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
Public Concern ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Mining System ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
And Control

AbstractBackgroundSince the new coronavirus epidemic in China in December 2019, information and discussions about COVID-19 have spread rapidly on the Internet and have quickly become the focus of worldwide attention, especially on social media.ObjectiveThis study aims to investigate and analyze the public’s attention to COVID-19-related events in China at the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic in China (December 31, 2019, to February 20, 2020) through the Sina Microblog hot search list.MethodsWe collected topics related to the COVID-19 epidemic on the Sina Microblog hot search list from December 31, 2019, to February 20, 2020 and described the trend of public attention on COVID-19 epidemic-related topics. ROST CM6.0 (ROST Content Mining System Version 6.0) was used to analyze the collected text for word segmentation, word frequency, and sentiment analysis. We further described the hot topic keywords and sentiment trends of public attention. We used VOSviewer to implement a visual cluster analysis of hot keywords and build a social network of public opinion content.ResultsThe study has four main findings. First, we analyzed the changing trend of the public’s attention to the COVID-19 epidemic, which can be divided into three stages. Second, the hot topic keywords of public attention at each stage are slightly different. In addition, the emotional tendency of the public toward the COVID-19 epidemic-related hot topics has changed from negative to neutral, with negative emotions weakening and positive emotions increasing as a whole. Finally, we divided the COVID-19 topics with the most public concern into five categories: new COVID-19 epidemics and their impact; (2) frontline reporting of the epidemic and prevention and control measures; (3) expert interpretation and discussion on the source of infection; (4) medical services on the frontline of the epidemic; and (5) focus on the global epidemic and the search for suspected cases.ConclusionsThis is the first study of public attention on the COVID-19 epidemic using a Chinese social media platform (i.e., Sina Microblog). Our study found that social media (e.g., Sina Microblog) can be used to measure public attention to public health emergencies. During the epidemic of the novel coronavirus, a large amount of information about the COVID-19 epidemic was disseminated on Sina Microblog and received widespread public attention. We have learned about the hotspots of public concern regarding the COVID-19 epidemic. These findings can help the government and health departments better communicate with the public on health and translate public health needs into practice to create targeted measures to prevent and control the spread of COVID-19.

scholarly journals Chinese Public's Attention to the COVID-19 Epidemic on Social Media: Observational Descriptive Study (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuxin Zhao ◽  
Sixiang Cheng ◽  
Xiaoyan Yu ◽  
Huilan Xu
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Public Concern ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Mining System ◽  
The Public ◽  
Source Of Infection ◽  
The Government ◽  
And Control

BACKGROUND Since the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) epidemic in China in December 2019, information and discussions about COVID-19 have spread rapidly on the internet and have quickly become the focus of worldwide attention, especially on social media. OBJECTIVE This study aims to investigate and analyze the public’s attention to events related to COVID-19 in China at the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic (December 31, 2019, to February 20, 2020) through the Sina Microblog hot search list. METHODS We collected topics related to the COVID-19 epidemic on the Sina Microblog hot search list from December 31, 2019, to February 20, 2020, and described the trend of public attention on COVID-19 epidemic-related topics. ROST Content Mining System version 6.0 was used to analyze the collected text for word segmentation, word frequency, and sentiment analysis. We further described the hot topic keywords and sentiment trends of public attention. We used VOSviewer to implement a visual cluster analysis of hot keywords and build a social network of public opinion content. RESULTS The study has four main findings. First, we analyzed the changing trend of the public’s attention to the COVID-19 epidemic, which can be divided into three stages. Second, the hot topic keywords of public attention at each stage were slightly different. Third, the emotional tendency of the public toward the COVID-19 epidemic-related hot topics changed from negative to neutral, with negative emotions weakening and positive emotions increasing as a whole. Fourth, we divided the COVID-19 topics with the most public concern into five categories: the situation of the new cases of COVID-19 and its impact, frontline reporting of the epidemic and the measures of prevention and control, expert interpretation and discussion on the source of infection, medical services on the frontline of the epidemic, and focus on the worldwide epidemic and the search for suspected cases. CONCLUSIONS Our study found that social media (eg, Sina Microblog) can be used to measure public attention toward public health emergencies. During the epidemic of the novel coronavirus, a large amount of information about the COVID-19 epidemic was disseminated on Sina Microblog and received widespread public attention. We have learned about the hotspots of public concern regarding the COVID-19 epidemic. These findings can help the government and health departments better communicate with the public on health and translate public health needs into practice to create targeted measures to prevent and control the spread of COVID-19.

“Why am I to blame when the law is on my side?” A study of crises, public opinion and frames

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lise-Lotte Holmgreen
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Restaurant Industry ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Media Frames ◽  
The Public ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Media Constructions ◽  
Organisational Behaviour ◽  
Conceptual Nature ◽  
Insight Into

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss why social media frames may exert substantial influence on the image of organisations and even trigger organisational crises. Design/methodology/approach – The study applies the theoretical approaches of crisis, framing and stakeholder theory to examine social media constructions of organisational behaviour. A recent case from the Danish restaurant industry exemplifies the structuring of social media frames and their impact on organisational image. Findings – The results of the study confirm the findings of previous studies but with the crucial addition that the power of social media frames is closely connected to their drawing on basic cultural and social beliefs that unite stakeholders across potentially different interests and identities. Research limitations/implications – The study is qualitative and applies a small dataset. To confirm the findings, further studies need to be conducted. Social implications – This paper sheds light on an issue which continues to be highly relevant for organisations. By gaining insight into the conceptual nature of frames and stakeholder motivations, which guide social-media entries, they may be better equipped for meeting the demands of the public and thus for preventing crises. Originality/value – This is a field of research that continues to develop concurrently with the development and spread of social media. By analysing in detail how frames are constructed, the study contributes to research in the field.

Who is Setting Emotions? A Comparative Study on Emotion Diffusion in Social Media among Public, Government and Media during the COVID-19 Pandemic in China (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuhuan Zhou ◽  
Yi Wang
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Information Exchange ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Time Point

BACKGROUND During the COVID-19 outbreak, social media served as the main platform for information exchange, through which the Chinese government, media and public would spread information. At the same time, a variety of emotions interweave, and the public emotions would also be affected by the government and media. OBJECTIVE This study aims to investigate the types, trends and relationships of emotional diffusion in Chinese social media among the public, the government and the media under the pandemic of COVID-19 (December 30,2019, to July 1,2020) . METHODS In this paper, Python 3.7.0 and its data crawling framework Scrapy 1.5.1 are used to write a web crawler program to search for super topics related to COVID-19 on Sina Weibo platform of different keywords . Then, we used emotional lexicon to analyze the types and trends of the public, government and media emotions on social media. Finally cross-lagged regression was applied to build the relationships of different subjects’ emotions. RESULTS The highlights of our study are threefold: (1) The public, the government and the media mainly diffuse positive emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic in China; (2) Emotional diffusion shows a certain change over time, and negative emotions are obvious in the initial phase of the pandemic, with the development of the pandemic, positive emotions surpass negative emotions and remain stable. (3)The impact among the three main emotions with the period as the time point is weak, while the impact of emotion with the day as the time point is relatively obvious. The emotions of the public and the government impact each other, and the media emotions can guide the public emotions. CONCLUSIONS This is the first study of comparing pubic, government and media emotions on the social media during COVID-19 pandemic in China. The pubic, the government and the media mainly diffuse positive emotions during the pandemic. And the government and the media have better effect on short-term emotional guidance. Therefore, when the pandemic suddenly occurs, the government and the media should intervene in time to solve problems and conflicts and diffuse positive and neutral emotions. In this regard, the government and the media can play important roles through social media in the major outbreaks. At the theoretical level, this paper takes China's epidemic environment and social media as the background to provide one of the explanatory perspectives for the spread of emotions on social media. At the some time, because of this special background, it can provide comparison and reference for the research on internet emotions in other countries.

The Music That is Here to Stay

2014 ◽  
pp. 145-159
Author(s):  
Atzimba Baltazar Macías
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Media ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Theoretical Discussion ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
The Public ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Use Of Internet ◽  
Mexican Politics

The chapter aims at understanding a recent phenomenon in Mexican politics: the use of Internet and social media as a new and powerful resource for mobilization and social participation in the policy process. Based on a review of two recent movements in Mexico (#YoSoy132 and The Wirikuta Defense Front), the chapter argues that although the Internet is still restricted to the middle and upper classes, the use of social media and its impact transcends class boundaries, draws public attention, creates a valuable social capital for mobilization, and influences the decision-making process. The chapter does not intend to provide evidence to the theoretical discussion on why and how social media enhances political participation and mobilization; rather, it reflects the features shared by these two movements in order to draw some lines for further research. It finds that, if used appropriately, social media is actually an effective tool to facilitate mobilization and modify the public agenda.

Teaching social media and public administration: Applying four approaches to an emerging issue

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-186
Author(s):  
Mark K McBeth ◽  
Adam M Brewer ◽  
Mackenzie N Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
City Council ◽  
Future Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
Education Literature ◽  
Wide Scale ◽  
Approach To Teaching ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Insight Into

This article presents an approach to teaching how social media impacts the public-sector workplace. Social media creates new challenges for both public administration practitioners and teachers. Yet, the topic does not yet have wide-scale discussion in the public administration education literature. After a review of four approaches to public administration (managerial, legal, political, and ethical), we developed a fictional social media case that was administered in an email survey to a sample of 50 graduates of a Master of Public Administration (MPA) program (37 responded and completed the survey). The case involves a local government employee whose employer wants to terminate because of the employee’s use of social media following a city council meeting. The results of our survey provide insight into how administrators would deal with the situation presented in the case and leads to the development of a series of questions for faculty using the case in their classroom. Our teaching case should provoke serious classroom discussions. Our study reveals the importance of the teaching and discussion of social media in public administration courses along with identifying continuing areas of future research.

scholarly journals Social Media Insights During Health Crisis Events: Lessons From the COVID-19 Pandemic in Vietnam (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huyen Thi Thanh Tran ◽  
Shih-Hao Lu ◽  
Ha Thi Thu Tran ◽  
Bien Van Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Software Tool ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Crisis Events ◽  
Issue Attention ◽  
The Government ◽  
Interaction Efficiency ◽  
People’S Attitudes

BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic is still undergoing complicated developments in Vietnam and around the world. The amount of information about the COVID-19 pandemic is enormous, especially in cyberspace, where people can create and share information quickly. This can lead to an "infodemic," which is a challenge every government might face in the fight against pandemics. OBJECTIVE This study aims to understand public attention towards the pandemic (from December 2019 to November 2020) through 7 types of sources: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, blogs, news sites, forums, and e-commerce sites. METHODS We collected and analyzed nearly 38 million pieces of text data from the sources listed above via SocialHeat, a social listening platform developed by YouNet Group. We described not only public attention volume trends, discussion sentiments; top sources, top posts that gained the most public attention, and hot keyword frequency; but also hot keywords’ co-occurrence as visualized by the VOSviewer software tool. RESULTS In this study, we reached 4 main conclusions. First, based on changing discussion trends regarding the subject of COVID-19, 7 periods were identified based on events that can be aggregated into two pandemic waves in Vietnam. Second, community pages on Facebook were the source of the most engagement from the public. However, the sources with the highest average interaction efficiency per article are government sources. Third, people’s attitudes when discussing the pandemic have changed from negative to positive emotions. Fourth, the type of content that attracts the most interactions from people varies from time to time. Besides that, the issue-attention cycle theory occurred not only once but four times during the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam. CONCLUSIONS Our study shows that online resources can help the government quickly identify public attention to public health messages during times of crisis. We also determined the hot spots that most interested in the public as well as public attention communication patterns, which can help the government get practical information to make more effective policy reactions to help prevent the spread of the pandemic.

scholarly journals Interaction and Transformation on Social Media: The Case of Twitter Campaigns

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 205630511775072 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Housley ◽  
Helena Webb ◽  
Meredydd Williams ◽  
Rob Procter ◽  
Adam Edwards ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Media Analysis ◽  
Social Media Analysis ◽  
Media Campaigns ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Insight Into

The increasing popularity of social media platforms creates new digital social networks in which individuals can interact and share information, news, and opinion. The use of these technologies appears to have the capacity to transform current social configurations and relations, not least within the public and civic spheres. Within the social sciences, much emphasis has been placed on conceptualizing social media’s role in modern society and the interrelationships between online and offline actors and events. In contrast, little attention has been paid to exploring user practices on social media and how individual posts respond to each other. To demonstrate the value of an interactional approach toward social media analysis, we performed a detailed analysis of Twitter-based online campaigns. After categorizing social media posts based on action(s), we developed a typology of user exchanges. We found these social media campaigns to be highly heterogeneous in content, with a wide range of actions performed and substantial numbers of tweets not engaged with the substance of the campaign. We argue that this interactional approach can form the basis for further work conceptualizing the broader impact of activist campaigns and the treatment of social media as “data” more generally. In this way, analytic focus on interactional practices on social media can provide empirical insight into the micro-transformational characteristics within “campaign communication.”

scholarly journals The Limited Influence of Right-Wing Movements on Social Media User Engagement

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 205630512110416
Author(s):  
Carsten Schwemmer
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Information Diffusion ◽  
User Engagement ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Online Data ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Reports ◽  
The Public Sphere

This article generates new insights into the dynamic interplay between social media content generated by right-wing movements, user engagement, and the public attention movements receive. I argue that movement leaders seek to achieve high user engagement for utilizing mechanisms of information diffusion to increase both online and on-site mobilization. In a case study, I analyze the German right-wing movement Pegida, which uses Facebook for spreading its anti-Islam agenda online. Data from Pegida’s Facebook page are combined with news reports over a period of 18 months to measure activity on Facebook and in the public sphere simultaneously. Results of quantitative text and time series analysis show that Pegida cannot influence user engagement by simply creating more posts. Instead, it is the content of posts that matters. Moreover, findings highlight a strong connection between Facebook activities and the public sphere. In times of decreasing attention, the movement changes its social media strategy in response to exogenous shocks: Pegida resorts increasingly to radical mobilization methods by posting xenophobic content that is more likely to incite users to engage on Facebook.

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