Zhao Yuxin, Cheng Sixiang, Yu Xiaoyan, Xu Huilan
Department of Social Medicine and Health Management, Xiangya School of Public Health, Central South University, Changsha, China.
J Med Internet Res. 2020 May 4;22(5):e18825. doi: 10.2196/18825.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
自2019年12月中国爆发冠状病毒病（COVID-19）疫情以来，有关COVID-19的信息和讨论在互联网上迅速传播，并迅速成为全球关注的焦点，尤其是在社交媒体上。
本研究旨在通过新浪微博热搜榜，调查和分析在COVID-19疫情初期（2019年12月31日至2020年2月20日）中国公众对与COVID-19相关事件的关注度。
收集2019年12月31日至2020年2月20日新浪微博热搜榜上与COVID-19疫情相关的话题，描述公众对COVID-19疫情相关话题的关注趋势。使用ROST Content Mining System 6.0版本对收集到的文本进行分词、词频和情感分析。进一步描述公众关注的热点话题关键词和情感趋势。使用VOSviewer对热点关键词进行可视化聚类分析，并构建舆情内容的社会网络。
该研究有四个主要发现。第一，分析了公众对COVID-19疫情关注度的变化趋势，可分为三个阶段。第二，各阶段公众关注的热点话题关键词略有不同。第三，公众对COVID-19疫情相关热点话题的情感倾向从消极转变为中性，消极情绪整体减弱，积极情绪有所增加。第四，将公众关注度最高的COVID-19话题分为五类：COVID-19新增病例情况及其影响、疫情一线报道及防控措施、专家对传染源的解读与讨论、疫情一线医疗服务、对全球疫情的关注及疑似病例排查。
我们的研究发现社交媒体（如新浪微博）可用于衡量公众对突发公共卫生事件的关注度。在新型冠状病毒疫情期间，新浪微博上传播了大量关于COVID-19疫情的信息，并受到公众广泛关注。我们了解到了公众对COVID-19疫情关注的热点。这些发现有助于政府和卫生部门更好地就健康问题与公众沟通，并将公众健康需求转化为实际行动，制定针对性措施以防控COVID-19的传播。
