Tracking and Analyzing Public Emotion Evolutions During COVID-19: A Case Study from the Event-Driven Perspective on
Qi Li1, Cong Wei1, Jianning Dang1
1Beijing Key Lab of Applied Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
|September 24, 2020
Summary
Public emotions during COVID-19 evolved, shifting from epidemic development to support and treatment. Social media analysis revealed public feedback often preceded official announcements, with user types showing different attention patterns.
Area of Science:
- Social Sciences
- Public Health
- Computational Social Science
Background:
- The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic triggered widespread public concern and panic globally.
- Understanding public emotional responses is crucial for managing public health crises.
Purpose of the Study:
- To track the evolution of public emotion in China during the early stages of COVID-19 using social media data.
- To analyze the root causes of public emotions from an event-driven perspective.
Main Methods:
- A dataset of 125,672 COVID-19-related microblogs from 40,891 users (December 2019 - February 2020) was analyzed.
- Public emotional evolution modes (accumulation, covariance, transition) were tracked based on extracted key events and change points.
- Dominant social events influencing public emotion were identified.
Main Results:
- Public emotions exhibited distinct evolution patterns across different COVID-19 phases.
- Attention gradually shifted from the development of the epidemic to aspects like encouragement, support, and treatment.
- Public sentiment on microblogs often emerged before official communications.
Conclusions:
- Social media provides early insights into public sentiment regarding public health events.
- Different user groups (large vs. common users) demonstrated varying attention to trending events during the COVID-19 outbreak.
- Event-driven analysis of social media can reveal public emotional dynamics during crises.
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