scholarly journals COVID-19 Information Dissemination Using the WeChat Communication Index: Retrospective Analysis Study (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zina Fan ◽  
Wenqiang Yin ◽  
Han Zhang ◽  
Dandan Wang ◽  
Chengxin Fan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Information Dissemination ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Information Governance ◽  
People’S Daily ◽  
People's Daily ◽  
Types Of Information

BACKGROUND The COVID-19 outbreak has tremendously impacted the world. The number of confirmed cases has continued to increase, causing damage to society and the economy worldwide. The public pays close attention to information on the pandemic and learns about the disease through various media outlets. The dissemination of comprehensive and accurate COVID-19 information that the public needs helps to educate people so they can take preventive measures. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to examine the dissemination of COVID-19 information by analyzing the information released by the official WeChat account of the <i>People’s Daily</i> during the pandemic. The most-read COVID-19 information in China was summarized, and the factors that influence information dissemination were studied to understand the characteristics that affect its dissemination. Moreover, this was conducted in order to identify how to effectively disseminate COVID-19 information and to provide suggestions on how to manage public opinion and information governance during a pandemic. METHODS This was a retrospective study based on a WeChat official account. We collected all COVID-19–related information, starting with the first report about COVID-19 from the <i>People’s Daily</i> and ending with the last piece of information about lifting the first-level emergency response in 34 Chinese provinces. A descriptive analysis was then conducted on this information, as well as on Qingbo Big Data’s dissemination index. Multiple linear regression was utilized to study the factors that affected information dissemination based on various characteristics and the dissemination index. RESULTS From January 19 to May 2, 2020, the <i>People’s Daily</i> released 1984 pieces of information; 1621 were related to COVID-19, which mainly included headline news items, items with emotional content, and issues related to the pandemic’s development. By analyzing the dissemination index, seven information dissemination peaks were discerned. Among the three dimensions of COVID-19 information—media salience, content, and format—eight factors affected the spread of COVID-19 information. CONCLUSIONS Different types of pandemic-related information have varying dissemination power. To effectively disseminate information and prevent the spread of COVID-19, we should identify the factors that affect this dissemination. We should then disseminate the types of information the public is most concerned about, use information to educate people to improve their health literacy, and improve public opinion and information governance.

Multidimensional influencing factors of public opinion information dissemination in social media: Evidence from Weibo dataset

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (31) ◽  
pp. 1950375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guanghui Wang ◽  
Yufei Wang ◽  
Kaidi Liu ◽  
Jimei Li
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Information Content ◽  
Influencing Factors ◽  
Network Structure ◽  
Information Dissemination ◽  
Influential Factors ◽  
Channel Network ◽  
The Public ◽  
Information Characteristics

The factors influencing the dissemination of public opinion on social media, the main carrier of public opinion, are diverse, complex and changeable. Existing studies of influential factors of public opinion dissemination focus on the information itself and information sources in the dissemination process, failing to consider the comprehensive influence of multidimensional factors, such as information content, sources and channels. This study takes the identification of multidimensional influential factors of social media information dissemination as the research object and comprehensively sorts out the influencing factors of public opinion. To improve the scientific basis and accuracy of the research, multidimensional factors, including information characteristics, dissemination network structure and user-level attributes, are selected to analyze the effect of influential factors in different dimensions on the dissemination of social media public opinion information using econometric models. Three main conclusions of this paper are as follows: (1) The traditional information characteristics (information content) and information source attributes (user-level factor) are not the only key factors affecting information dissemination, while the information channel (network structure) is worth more consideration. (2) Netizens tend to pay more attention to the psychological and emotional attributes of information when forwarding public opinions. The communication mode in which offline social elites enlighten the public no longer exists; whether a user is a network celebrity or lives in the central area no longer significantly affects public opinion dissemination. (3) The higher the total amount of information users release, the more the information would interfere with the public opinion. This is mainly because users with a higher level of activity may release more invalid information about advertising that has nothing to do with public opinion events.

#RadialFirst and #RadialForNeuro: A descriptive analysis of Twitter conversations regarding transradial access

2021 ◽  
pp. 197140092110123
Author(s):  
Faith C Robertson ◽  
Joseph R Linzey ◽  
Naif M Alotaibi ◽  
Robert W Regenhardt ◽  
Pablo Harker ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Information Dissemination ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Transradial Access ◽  
Qualitative Thematic Analysis ◽  
Twitter Activity ◽  
Method Analysis ◽  
Neurointerventional Procedures

Background Transradial access for neurointerventional procedures was adopted and modified from cardiovascular intervention and is increasingly established as a safe and effective alternative to transfemoral catheterization. As social media influences public opinion on medical treatment, this study analyzes Twitter conversations to elucidate social media’s depiction of transradial access as a neurointerventional tool. Materials and methods Twitter hashtags #RadialFirst and #RadialForNeuro were evaluated using a mixed-method analysis of quantitative social media metrics and qualitative thematic analysis. Results Between January 2015 and April 2020, 104,146 tweets from 141 countries employed the hashtag #RadialFirst (2015 (1); 2016 (0); 2017 (22,804); 2018 (33,074); 2019 (38,352); 2020 (9,915 January-April)). These generated 226,909,374 impressions and were retweeted 80,120 times by 13,707 users. Media was present in 62.5% of tweets (e.g. wrist image, angiographic runs) but only 14.5% had a reference article. Physicians authored 70.8% of tweets; interventional cardiologists accounted for 83% of top 100 influencers. #RadialForNeuro is more nascent (6 posts in 2019; 323 posts January–April 2020), with 392,662 impressions, and 254 retweets by 177 users; physicians authored 35.6%. Compared to #RadialFirst, #RadialforNeuro tweets were more likely to include media (76%), less likely to include citations (9.7%), and more likely to discuss complications and troubleshooting techniques. Conclusion Twitter activity regarding transradial access permits information dissemination and discussion on approach benefits and challenges. However, many posts arise from non-physician sources and lack links to peer-reviewed publication. The public should be mindful that tweets may reflect opinions, rather than experience or scientific evidence.

Performance and Citizenship

2021 ◽  
pp. 182-198
Author(s):  
Ioana Szeman
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
The Public ◽  
People’S Daily ◽  
People's Daily ◽  
A Performance

This chapter proposes the citizenship gap as a paradigm that connects the experiences of migrants and minorities who have legal citizenship but few de facto rights and uses a performance lens to bring scholarship on citizenship in conversation with research on migration and minorities. It argues that the concepts of performance and performativity allow us to grasp modes of citizenship that do not follow verbal, logocentric interactions and are not directly addressed to the state and state institutions and to follow the citizenship gap as it is experienced in people’s daily lives. Using an intersectional lens and ethnographic research with Roma in Romania, the chapter follows the performative and everyday iterations and enactments of citizenship among different Roma. It argues that the concepts of the public and audience in theorizations of citizenship need to be reconfigured to include Roma, other minorities, and migrants more generally, and shows how Roma artists and activists claim countercultural citizenship and belonging in a variety of media and through acts of citizenship that may otherwise be overlooked.

Information kiosks: Singapore users' experience

2002 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-41
Author(s):  
Lai-Lai Tung
Keyword(s):  
Information Dissemination ◽  
Demographic Variables ◽  
The Other ◽  
Focus Group Interviews ◽  
The Public ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Group Interviews ◽  
Types Of Information ◽  
Public Views ◽  
High Information

Information kiosks are machines that can disseminate information, handle transactions or perform both functions. For the purpose of our study, these kiosks are classified into four different types of information kiosks with respect to the functions that they perform. These four types of kiosks are Basic Information kiosks, High Transactional kiosks, High Information Dissemination kiosks and High-End kiosks. A questionnaire survey on the general public was conducted to find out the public views on the information kiosks. Focus group interviews and pilot tests were carried out to ensure the survey was feasible and that the structure of the questionnaire was clear and proper. Generally, the results of our survey showed that older users and those with high positions tend to use less of information kiosks. The reasons cited by users of information kiosks: need to find out information or perform some transactions, for convenience and out of curiosity. On the other hand, non-users of information kiosks cited that they do not use the kiosks because of inconvenience and a lack of need to use them. Generally, transactional kiosks are found to be the most preferred kiosks due to convenience reasons. On the other hand, for Basic and High Information Dissemination kiosks, users actually prefer personalised services to them. Our results also showed that except for High-End kiosks, people's preference of information kiosks to personalised services is not related to the demographic variables but rather the types of functions the kiosks perform.

scholarly journals Close to Beijing: Geographic Biases in People’s Daily

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 59-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morley J. Weston ◽  
Adrian Rauchfleisch
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Spatial Analysis ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Topic Modeling ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
People’S Daily ◽  
Geographic Diversity ◽  
People's Daily ◽  
Automated Methods

Inequities in China are reflected within state-run media coverage due to its specific role “guiding public opinion,” and with our study we contribute to the geographic turn in the Chinese context with regard to media and journalism. As a subject of a spatial study, China is unique due to several factors: geographic diversity, authoritarian control, and centralized media. By analyzing text from 53,000 articles published in <em>People’s Daily</em> (rénmín rìbào, 人民日報) from January 2016 to August 2020, we examine how the amount of news coverage varies by region within China, how topics and sentiments manifest in different places, and how coverage varies with regard to foreign countries. Automated methods were used to detect place names from the articles and geoparse them to specific locations, combining spatial analysis, topic modeling and sentiment analysis to identify geographic biases in news coverage in an authoritarian context. We found remarkably uniform and positive coverage domestically, but substantial differences towards coverage of different foreign countries.

Analysis and Management of Flu Disease Public Opinion Based on Machine Learning

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 1791-1797
Author(s):  
Jie Zhang ◽  
Chao Yuan
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
New Media ◽  
Early Warning ◽  
Information Dissemination ◽  
Improved Genetic Algorithm ◽  
The Public ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Information Publishing ◽  
Transmission Speed

In the new media era, there are more ways of information dissemination, and the speed of information dissemination becomes faster. Along with it, various public opinions and rumors flood the cyberspace. As a mainstream social media information publishing platform, microblog has become the main way for netizens to obtain, disseminate and publish information. Because microblog can freely make speeches, and has a fast transmission speed and a wide range, it is easy for public opinion information to be widely disseminated in a short time. In particular, information such as rumors in public opinion can affect the network environment and social stability. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze and predict public opinion changes and to provide early warning. The literature uses the classic BP-NN (BP-NN) as the base prediction model, and uses the information published on the Sina microblog platform as a sample to analyze and predict the public opinion of influenza diseases. Due to the BP-NN’ slow convergence speed, this paper introduces an improved genetic algorithm to select the optimal parameters in the BP-NN (IGA-BP-NN), shorten the calculation time, and improve the analysis and prediction efficiency. The experiments verify that the work in this paper can provide more accurate early-warning information for the public opinion management of related departments.

Dental care during the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Arabic tweets analysis (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khalifa S. Al-Khalifa ◽  
Rasha AlSheikh ◽  
Yasser A. Alsahafi ◽  
Atheer Alkhalifa ◽  
Shazia Sadaf ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Oral Health ◽  
Dental Treatment ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
World Health ◽  
Dental Services ◽  
The Public ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Obvious Association ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Health Organization

BACKGROUND Twitter is a powerful platform which could be used to improvise the demand and supply of dental services during a pandemic. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to examine the nature and dissemination of COVID-19 information related to dentistry on Twitter platform Arabic database. METHODS One hundred and fifty independent searches with a combination of keywords for both COVID-19 and dentistry from a preselected Arabic keyword were carried out for the period from the 2nd of March to the 6th of July 2020. Tweets were filtered to remove duplicate and unrelated tweets. The suitable tweets were 1,150. After calibration, two examiners coded the tweets following two main themes: COVID-19 and oral health-related information. Tweets were then compared with COVID-19 daily events in the Arab counties as reported by the World Health Organization (WHO). Descriptive analysis was performed to present the overview of the findings using Microsoft Excel. RESULTS There was no obvious association between time distribution of the tweets to the distribution of new COVID-19 cases and deaths during the period from March 2, 2020 to July 6, 2020. The most retweeted information was the help with urgent consultation or emergency dental treatment during COVID-19 tweeted by a dentist. There were 673 retweets and 1116 likes of this tweet. The most common tweets related to oral health was needs of dental treatment (n=462, 39.5%) of which, toothaches or wisdom tooth problems constituted 48% of the related tweets. CONCLUSIONS Twitter is a platform reflecting the public interest and concerns, based on the finding tweets tend to increase with major events and news and thus help navigate the proper action needed to address public concern.

scholarly journals Effects of Health Information Dissemination on User Follows and Likes during COVID-19 Outbreak in China: Data and Content Analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (14) ◽  
pp. 5081 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rongyang Ma ◽  
Zhaohua Deng ◽  
Manli Wu
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Health Information ◽  
Information Dissemination ◽  
Information Behavior ◽  
The Public ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Related Information ◽  
The Common ◽  
Information Characteristics ◽  
Positive Effect

Background: COVID-19 has greatly attacked China, spreading in the whole world. Articles were posted on many official WeChat accounts to transmit health information about this pandemic. The public also sought related information via social media more frequently. However, little is known about what kinds of information satisfy them better. This study aimed to explore the characteristics of health information dissemination that affected users’ information behavior on WeChat. Methods: Two-wave data were collected from the top 200 WeChat official accounts on the Xigua website. The data included the change in the number of followers and the total number of likes on each account in a 7-day period, as well as the number of each type of article and headlines about coronavirus. It was used to developed regression models and conduct content analysis to figure out information characteristics in quantity and content. Results: For nonmedical institution accounts in the model, report and story types of articles had positive effects on users’ following behaviors. The number of headlines on coronavirus positively impacts liking behaviors. For medical institution accounts, report and science types had a positive effect, too. In the content analysis, several common characteristics were identified. Conclusions: Characteristics in terms of the quantity and content in health information dissemination contribute to users’ information behavior. In terms of the content in the headlines, via coding and word frequency analysis, organizational structure, multimedia applications, and instructions—the common dimension in different articles—composed the common features in information that impacted users’ liking behaviors.

The “Propaganda State” and Sino-American Rapprochement: Preparing the Chinese Public for Nixon’s Visit

2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Guolin Yi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
The Public ◽  
People’S Daily ◽  
People's Daily ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Chinese Public

Studies of Sino-American rapprochement in 1972 have not sufficiently explored how the Chinese public, which had been taught to hate the American “imperialists,” learned (or was instructed) about the dramatic change. By analyzing Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily) and Cankao Xiaoxi (Reference News), an internal (neibu) newspaper circulated only among Chinese Communist Party cadres, this article examines how the Chinese government prepared the party and its people for rapprochement from 1969 through 1971. Reference News kept cadres posted about Washington’s overtures, Nixon’s expressed wish to visit China, and Mao’s willingness to receive him, among other items not shared with the wider public. Before official exchanges were agreed, the Chinese government conducted “people-to-people diplomacy” by inviting American “friends” and displaying them to the Chinese public through banquets, receptions, and ceremonies. People’s Daily, which offered intensive coverage to these visitors, was particularly important in promoting the atmosphere of friendship. Party leaders did not need the approval of the public and party workers, but they did take their response into account in making foreign policy, especially on dramatic changes. By evaluating the Chinese communication system and its handling of public opinion on relations with the United States, this article presents a more nuanced picture of the “propaganda state.”

scholarly journals The Beginning of the End for the Chinese Proletariat

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-76
Author(s):  
Bo Ærenlund Sørensen
Keyword(s):  
Life Time ◽  
Population Based ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Great Care ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Press ◽  
People’S Daily ◽  
Employment Security ◽  
People's Daily ◽  
Excellent Source

This article examines how China’s Communist Party (CCP) sought to justify its policies fostering inequality at the urban factory floor in the early years after Mao’s death through publications in the People’s Daily. The article focuses on three issues that emerged frequently in the newspaper: the increased prevalence of incentive wages, the abolishment of life-time employment for workers and the evolving discourse related to worker influence at their workplace. The article shows that the People’s Daily did not simply seek to persuade the public that the reforms were compatible with socialism, the newspaper also took great care to showcase which kinds of behaviours and emotions would be appropriate for the new working subject. The CCP’s dedication to reforming the population through the press makes the People’s Daily an excellent source for tracking norm intransigence on the part of the population. Based on the observation that the CCP sought to legitimate policies ending employment security many years before such policies were adopted, the article also suggests that public opinion had a direct influence on the timing of the early reforms.

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