Due to necessary scheduled maintenance, the JMIR Publications website will be unavailable from Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you.
Who will be affected?
Readers: No access to all 28 journals. We recommend accessing our articles via PubMed Central
Authors: No access to the submission form or your user account.
Reviewers: No access to your user account. Please download manuscripts you are reviewing for offline reading before Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 7:00 PM.
Editors: No access to your user account to assign reviewers or make decisions.
Copyeditors: No access to user account. Please download manuscripts you are copyediting before Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 7:00 PM.
Topic and Trend Analysis of Weibo Discussions About COVID-19 Medications Before and After China’s Exit from the Zero-COVID Policy: Retrospective Infoveillance Study
Topic and Trend Analysis of Weibo Discussions about COVID-19 Medications Before and After China’s Exit from Zero-COVID Policy: Retrospective Infoveillance Study
Yicheng Zhu;
Wujiong Ren;
Ke Ni;
Duo Lan
ABSTRACT
Background:
After three years of Zero-COVID policy, China started to lift its stringent pandemic control measures with the announcement of the “ten new measures” on December 7th, 2022. This change created a massive demand for COVID-19 medications and treatments.
Objective:
This study aims to explore how the lifting of pandemic control measures impacts media and public’s attention to different types of risks involving COVID-19 infection and medications.
Methods:
The current study builds topic models of relevant discussion on Chinese social media Weibo and identified three major themes.
Results:
It finds that Weibo discussions shifted sharply from concerns of social risks to personal risks surrounding COVID-19 infection.
Conclusions:
Topics relating to symptoms and treatments was granulized into medication availability, purchase, delivery, and self-medication in post-Zero-COVID times. Different roles of mainstream media accounts and general publics’ accounts are also analyzed and discussed.
Citation
Please cite as:
Zhu Y, Ren W, Ni K, Lan D
Topic and Trend Analysis of Weibo Discussions About COVID-19 Medications Before and After China’s Exit from the Zero-COVID Policy: Retrospective Infoveillance Study