Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Sep 4, 2020
Date Accepted: Nov 6, 2020
Date Submitted to PubMed: Nov 11, 2020
Characterizing Weibo Social Media Posts from Wuhan, China During the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Content Analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
The global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is staggering as it now has eclipsed 24 million confirmed cases globally. Given its rapid progression, it is important to examine its origins to better understand how people’s knowledge, attitudes and reactions have evolved over time. One method is to use data mining of social media conversations related to information exposure and self-reported user experiences.
Objective:
This study sought to characterize the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of social media users located at the initial epicenter of the outbreak by analyzing data from the Sina Weibo platform in Chinese.
Methods:
We used web scraping to collect public Weibo posts from Dec 31, 2019-Jan 20, 2020 from users located in Wuhan City that contained COVID-19-related keywords. We then manually annotated all posts using an inductive content coding approach to identify specific information sources and key themes including news and knowledge about the outbreak, public sentiment, and public reaction to control and response measures.
Results:
We identified 10,159 COVID-19 posts from 8,703 unique Weibo users. Among our three parent classification areas, 67.22% included news and knowledge posts, 69.72% included public sentiment, and 47.87% included public reaction and self-reported behavior. Many of these themes were expressed concurrently in the same Weibo post. Sub-topics for news and knowledge posts followed four distinct timelines and evidenced an escalation of the seriousness of the outbreak as more information became available. Public sentiment primarily focused on expressions of anxiety, though some expressions of anger and even positive sentiment were also detected. Public reaction included both protective and elevated health risk behavior.
Conclusions:
Between the announcement of pneumonia and respiratory illness of unknown origin in late December 2019, to the discovery of human-human transmission on January 20th, 2020, we observed a high volume of public anxiety and confusion about COVID-19, including different reaction to news by users, negative sentiment after being exposed to information, and public reaction that translated to self-reported behavior. These findings provide early insight into changing knowledge, attitudes and behaviors about COVID-19 and have the potential to inform future outbreak communication, response, and policymaking in China and beyond. Clinical Trial: N/A
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