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

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.

Download Full-text

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

Journal of Medical Internet Research ◽

10.2196/18825 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 22 (5) ◽

pp. e18825 ◽

Cited By ~ 29

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.

Download Full-text

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

10.2196/preprints.18825 ◽

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.

Download Full-text

A shift from science to politics : a content analysis of COVID-19 Videos on YouTube (Preprint)

10.2196/preprints.33948 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Chyun-Fung Shi ◽

Matthew C So ◽

Sophie Stelmach ◽

Arielle Earn ◽

David J D Earn ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Social Media ◽

Content Analysis ◽

Large Scale ◽

Control Measures ◽

Mitigation Measures ◽

Health Campaigns ◽

Public Attention ◽

Conflicting Information ◽

Social Media Platforms

BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic is the first pandemic where social media platforms relayed information on a large scale, enabling an “infodemic” of conflicting information which undermined the global response to the pandemic. Understanding how the information circulated and evolved on social media platforms is essential for planning future public health campaigns. OBJECTIVE This study investigated what types of themes about COVID-19 were most viewed on YouTube during the first 8 months of the pandemic, and how COVID-19 themes progressed over this period. METHODS We analyzed top-viewed YouTube COVID-19 related videos in English from from December 1, 2019 to August 16, 2020 with an open inductive content analysis. We coded 536 videos associated with 1.1 billion views across the study period. East Asian countries were the first to report the virus, while most of the top-viewed videos in English were from the US. Videos from straight news outlets dominated the top-viewed videos throughout the outbreak, and public health authorities contributed the fewest. Although straight news was the dominant COVID-19 video source with various types of themes, its viewership per video was similar to that for entertainment news and YouTubers after March. RESULTS We found, first, that collective public attention to the COVID-19 pandemic on YouTube peaked around March 2020, before the outbreak peaked, and flattened afterwards despite a spike in worldwide cases. Second, more videos focused on prevention early on, but videos with political themes increased through time. Third, regarding prevention and control measures, masking received much less attention than lockdown and social distancing in the study period. CONCLUSIONS Our study suggests that a transition of focus from science to politics on social media intensified the COVID-19 infodemic and may have weakened mitigation measures during the first waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is recommended that authorities should consider co-operating with reputable social media influencers to promote health campaigns and improve health literacy. In addition, given high levels of globalization of social platforms and polarization of users, tailoring communication towards different digital communities is likely to be essential.

Download Full-text

Abordagem conceitual sobre a sífilis na gestação e o tratamento de parceiros sexuais

Enfermagem em Foco ◽

10.21675/2357-707x.2011.v2.n2.106 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 2 (2) ◽

pp. 108-111 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Dayanne Rakelly De Oliveira ◽

Mayanne Santana Nóbrega De Figueiredo

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Sexual Partners ◽

Control Measures ◽

Health It ◽

The Public ◽

And Control ◽

In Pregnancy

Este texto tem como objetivo trazer considerações epidemiológicas e conceituais sobre a sífilis, o tratamento de parceiros sexuais e a inserção do enfermeiro em ações de prevenção e controle desse importante agravo à saúde pública. Enfatiza os aspectos relacionados às medidas de controle dos casos, à terapêutica da doença e à magnitude das complicações visando a contribuir para o aprofundamento da temática e reflexão da prática profissional.Descritores: Sífilis, Parceiros Sexuais, Enfermagem, Saúde Pública.Conceptual approach on syphilis in pregnancy and the treatment of sexual partnersThis text aims to bring epidemiological and conceptual considerations on syphilis, the treatment of sexual partners and the insertion of the nurse in prevention actions and control of this relevant grievance to the public health. It emphasizes the aspects related to control measures of the cases, to the therapeutics of disease and the magnitude of the complications seeking to contribute to the deepening of the theme and the reflection of professional practice.Descriptors: Syphilis, Sexual Partners, Nursing, Public Health.Abordaje conceptual sobre la sífilis en la gestación y lo tratamiento de las parejas sexualesEnfoque conceptual de la sífilis en el embarazo y el tratamiento de las parejas sexuales. Este texto tiene como objetivo integrar consideraciones conceptuales y epidemiológicas sobre la sífilis, el tratamiento de las parejas sexuales y la inclusión de los enfermeros en la prevención y control de este importante agravio de salud pública. Destaca los aspectos relacionados con los casos, con la terapéutica de la enfermedad y con la magnitud de las complicaciones con el objetivo de contribuir a la profundización de la temática y la reflexión de la práctica profesional.Descriptores: Sífilis, Las Parejas Sexuales, Enfermería, Salud Pública.

Download Full-text

The Evolution Model of Public Risk Perception Based on Pandemic Spreading Theory under Perspective of COVID-19

Complexity ◽

10.1155/2021/1015049 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 2021 ◽

pp. 1-10

Author(s):

Yi-Cheng Zhang ◽

Zhi Li ◽

Guo-Bing Zhou ◽

Nai-Ru Xu ◽

Jia-Bao Liu

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Risk Perception ◽

Social Order ◽

Prevention And Control ◽

Negative Impact ◽

Control Measures ◽

The Public ◽

Public Health Emergencies ◽

Public Risk ◽

And Control

After the occurrence of public health emergencies, due to the uncertainty of the evolution of events and the asymmetry of pandemic information, the public’s risk perception will fluctuate dramatically. Excessive risk perception often causes the public to overreact to emergencies, resulting in irrational behaviors, which have a negative impact on economic development and social order. However, low-risk perception will reduce individual awareness of prevention and control, which is not conducive to the implementation of government pandemic prevention and control measures. Therefore, it is of great significance to accurately evaluate public risk perception for improving government risk management. This paper took the evolution of public risk perception based on the COVID-19 region as the research object. First, we analyze the characteristics of infectious diseases in the evolution of public risk perception of public health emergencies. Second, we analyze the characteristics of risk perception transmission in social networks. Third, we establish the dynamic model of public risk perception evolution based on SEIR, and the evolution mechanism of the public risk perception network is revealed through simulation experiments. Finally, we provide policy suggestions for government departments to deal with public health emergencies based on the conclusions of this study.

Download Full-text

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)

10.2196/preprints.27056 ◽

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.

Download Full-text

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

10.2196/preprints.27116 ◽

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.

Download Full-text

Limited Early Warnings and Public Attention to Coronavirus Disease 2019 in China, January–February, 2020: A Longitudinal Cohort of Randomly Sampled Weibo Users

Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness ◽

10.1017/dmp.2020.68 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 14 (5) ◽

pp. e24-e27 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Yuner Zhu ◽

King-Wa Fu ◽

Karen A. Grépin ◽

Hai Liang ◽

Isaac Chun-Hai Fung

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Control Measures ◽

Red Cross ◽

Public Attention ◽

Missed Opportunities ◽

Longitudinal Cohort ◽

Nationally Representative ◽

Prevention And Control Measures ◽

And Control ◽

Early Warnings

ABSTRACTObjective:Awareness and attentiveness have implications for the acceptance and adoption of disease prevention and control measures. Social media posts provide a record of the public’s attention to an outbreak. To measure the attention of Chinese netizens to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a pre-established nationally representative cohort of Weibo users was searched for COVID-19-related key words in their posts.Methods:COVID-19-related posts (N = 1101) were retrieved from a longitudinal cohort of 52 268 randomly sampled Weibo accounts (December 31, 2019–February 12, 2020).Results:Attention to COVID-19 was limited prior to China openly acknowledging human-to-human transmission on January 20. Following this date, attention quickly increased and has remained high over time. Particularly high levels of social media traffic appeared around when Wuhan was first placed in quarantine (January 23–24, 8–9% of the overall posts), when a scandal associated with the Red Cross Society of China occurred (February 1, 8%), and, following the death of Dr Li Wenliang (February 6–7, 11%), one of the whistleblowers who was reprimanded by the Chinese police in early January for discussing this outbreak online.Conclusion:Limited early warnings represent missed opportunities to engage citizens earlier in the outbreak. Governments should more proactively communicate early warnings to the public in a transparent manner.

Download Full-text

The pandemic of social media panic travels faster than the COVID-19 outbreak

Journal of Travel Medicine ◽

10.1093/jtm/taaa031 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 27 (3) ◽

Cited By ~ 149

Author(s):

Anneliese Depoux ◽

Sam Martin ◽

Emilie Karafillakis ◽

Raman Preet ◽

Annelies Wilder-Smith ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Social Media ◽

Real Time ◽

Control Measures ◽

Public Health Officials ◽

The Creation ◽

And Control

We need to rapidly detect and respond to public rumours, perceptions, attitudes and behaviours around COVID-19 and control measures. The creation of an interactive platform and dashboard to provide real-time alerts of rumours and concerns about coronavirus spreading globally would enable public health officials and relevant stakeholders to respond rapidly with a proactive and engaging narrative that can mitigate misinformation.

Download Full-text

An Investigation on the Public's Acceptance of Prevention and Control Measures for COVID-19 in China

10.21203/rs.3.rs-99541/v1 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Ao Zhang ◽

Xiang Wu ◽

Jingqi Gao ◽

Yongbao Zhang

Keyword(s):

Prevention And Control ◽

Control Measures ◽

Public Acceptance ◽

Prevention Measures ◽

The Public ◽

Epidemic Period ◽

The Difference ◽

The Government ◽

Prevention And Control Measures ◽

And Control

Abstract Background: China has basically succeeded in controlling the COVID-19 epidemic, which is due to the cooperation and acceptance of epidemic prevention measures by the public. However, few studies have examined the measures China has taken to combat COVID-19 in order to reflect on its success in curbing the the spread of epidemic.Methods: In this study, the public acceptance questionnaire was designed based on the epidemic prevention measures adopted in China, to investigate the difference of public acceptance of epidemic prevention measures. The survey data was collected from 2,062 samples with different demographic characteristics from March 8, 2020 to April 9, 2020. And SPSS was used to analyze the data collected in the questionnaire, such as one-way variance, so as to draw conclusions.Results: The results show that age and educational level have a significant influence on public acceptance. In contrast gender and occupation field has no significant impact on it. The acceptance of the emergency prevention and control measures taken by the government during the epidemic period is generally high. With the development of the epidemic, the acceptability is increasing. And the public acceptance of traffic measures was highest. Conclusions: Rapid deployment of epidemic prevention measures and appropriate methods in transportation, economy and education are the key to China's effective containment of the epidemic. Measures such as shutting down cities and encouraging the wearing of masks deserve to be copied by other countries. This study summed up China's scientific experience in the fight against COVID-19 and differences in public acceptance. It can provide a positive reference for the development of epidemic prevention measures in other countries.

Download Full-text