JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Background:

In public health emergencies, the public's emotions are affected by online public opinion; thus, in-depth studies and analyses are needed. Nucleic acid testing is the gold standard for diagnosing novel coronavirus infections; several cities and regions in China have issued standing nucleic acid testing policies, which have had a great impact on socioeconomics and people's lives, among others, and these policies have attracted widespread attention on social media platforms. Although nucleic acid testing policies are widely recognized, studies on the evolution of public opinion in the process of regularized nucleic acid testing are rare.

Objective:

Objective:

In this study, the normalization of nucleic acid test results during the COVID-19 pandemic are considered as an example with a focus on the sentiment of network public opinion regarding public health emergencies. We analyze the manifestations and changes of public opinion governance in reality, explore strategies for public opinion governance, and provide recommendations and references for future responses to public health emergencies.

Methods:

Methods:

We collected blog posts related to nucleic acid testing on Weibo from April 1, 2022, to July 31, 2022. Python pysenti and scikit-learn were used for the sentiment analysis and LDA topic extraction, respectively.

Results:

Results:

A total of 463,566 pieces of data were collected in this study. Posts with positive, negative, and neutral sentiments accounted for 67.14%, 24.67%, and 8.19%, respectively. LDA topic extraction identified 8 themes, with the largest being the Shanghai outbreak (195,612, 42.20%) and the smallest being hospital visits (2,137, 0.46%). For all topics, posts with positive sentiment consistently outnumbered those with negative sentiment.

Conclusions:

Conclusions:

During public health emergencies, the public's sentiment regarding nucleic acid testing is generally positive, with a wide range of topics of interest. Moreover, the public actively seeks and shares information about nucleic acid testing. The government can respond to online public opinion by establishing early warning tools, by strengthening social media sentiment monitoring, by enhancing communication between the government and the public, and by improving the public opinion information disclosure system.