Attention dynamics on the Chinese social media Sina Weibo during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Understanding attention dynamics on social media during pandemics could help governments minimize the effects. We focus on how COVID-19 has influenced the attention dynamics on the biggest Chinese microblogging website Sina Weibo during the first four months of the pandemic. We study the real-time Hot Search List (HSL), which provides the ranking of the most popular 50 hashtags based on the amount of Sina Weibo searches. We show how the specific events, measures and developments during the epidemic affected the emergence of different kinds of hashtags and the ranking on the HSL. A significant increase of COVID-19 related hashtags started to occur on HSL around January 20, 2020, when the transmission of the disease between humans was announced. Then very rapidly a situation was reached where COVID-related hashtags occupied 30–70% of the HSL, however, with changing content. We give an analysis of how the hashtag topics changed during the investigated time span and conclude that there are three periods separated by February 12 and March 12. In period 1, we see strong topical correlations and clustering of hashtags; in period 2, the correlations are weakened, without clustering pattern; in period 3, we see a potential of clustering while not as strong as in period 1. We further explore the dynamics of HSL by measuring the ranking dynamics and the lifetimes of hashtags on the list. This way we can obtain information about the decay of attention, which is important for decisions about the temporal placement of governmental measures to achieve permanent awareness. Furthermore, our observations indicate abnormally higher rank diversity in the top 15 ranks on HSL due to the COVID-19 related hashtags, revealing the possibility of algorithmic intervention from the platform provider.

A systematic literature review of individual-level psychological and behavioral responses to the health information of COVID-19 from social media and legacy media

“…There are seven studies that show a strong correlation between social media activities about COVID-19 and viral transmission. For instance, Bisanzio et al (2020) and Cui and Kertész (2021) demonstrated that social media (e.g., Twitter, Weibo) can be used to predict the spatial and temporal transmission of infectious diseases in pandemic times. Younis et al(2020) confirmed that the utility of social media can be used as an epidemiological tool in the assessment of protection measures at the beginning of the pandemic.…”

Chinese National Health Commission’s Reporting Strategies on COVID-19

“…Thus, it is crucial for policymakers to understand people's opinions toward the pandemic so that they can balance the concerns of stopping the pandemic on the one hand, and keeping people in good spirits on the other hand, as well as anticipate people's reactions to certain events and policies so that the policymakers can prepare in advance. Cui and Kertész (2021) also claimed that in this age of information deluge the dynamics of public attention is of great importance in many areas, including education, politics, marketing and governance. They stated that identifying the patterns of online attention dynamics and their relationships to specific events and measures during pandemic may contribute to more efficient and effective decisions being made.…”

“…Therefore, the "bad news" actually moves towards the "good news", which in Cui and Kertész's (2021) The news stories that fit into the Cui and Kertész's (2021) Regulations category consist of announcements by authorities of national, regional, institutional laws, rules and regulations associated with public behaviours and concerns during the pandemic. The source of such news was often Xinhua News Agency, with such articles found to a greater extent in the Chinese version of the NHC's website, rather than the English one.…”

Developmental Trend of Subjective Well-Being of Weibo Users During COVID-19: Online Text Analysis Based on Machine Learning Method

“…The levels of psychological stress and emotional stress, as well as the living quality of Chinese people, have been greatly altered by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic since its initial outbreak ( Cui and Kertész, 2021 ). The daily briefing report of the National Health Commission of China, as of May 31, 2020, reported a total of 83,017 confirmed cases in the Chinese mainland, 78,307 cured infections, and 4,634 deaths.…”