Social Media Behavior and Emotional Evolution during Emergency Events

Abstract

Online social networks have recently become a vital source for emergency event news and the consequent venting of emotions. However, knowledge on what drives user emotion and behavioral responses to emergency event developments are still limited. Therefore, unlike previous studies that have only explored trending themes and public sentiment in social media, this study sought to develop a holistic framework to assess the impact of emergency developments on emotions and behavior by exploring the evolution of trending themes and public sentiments in social media posts as a focal event developed. By examining the event timelines and the associated hashtags on the popular Chinese social media site Sina-Weibo, the 2019 Wuxi viaduct collapse accident was taken as the research object and the event timeline and the Sina-Weibo tagging function focused on to analyze the behaviors and emotional changes in the social media users and elucidate the correlations. It can conclude that: (i) There were some social media rules being adhered to and that new focused news from the same event impacted user behavior and the popularity of previous thematic discussions. (ii) While the most critical function for users appeared to express their emotions, the user foci changed when recent focus news emerged. (iii) As the news of the collapse deepened, the change in user sentiment was found to be positively correlated with the information released by personal-authentication accounts. This research provides a new perspective on the extraction of information from social media platforms in emergencies and social-emotional transmission rules.

Analysis of the Evolution of User Emotion and Opinion Leaders’ Information Dissemination Behavior in the Knowledge Q&A Community during COVID-19

“…As shown in 2, in the opinion leader information exchange network, certain individuals (4, 14, 54, 79, 110, 140, 166, 186) have a larger in-degree and are therefore good at receiv formation from other users. Some individuals (27,35,54,58,63,117,139,140,14…”

“…As shown in Table 2, in the opinion leader information exchange network, certain individuals (4, 14, 40, 44, 54, 79, 110, 140, 166, 186) have a larger in-degree and are therefore good at receiving information from other users. Some individuals (27,35,54,58,63,117,139,140,147,169,173,174,187) have a larger out-degree, which means they are willing to actively discuss topics with other individuals and are good at expressing their opinions. Meanwhile, Freeman's betweenness measures the degree of control of resources by actors.…”

“…Meanwhile, Freeman's betweenness measures the degree of control of resources by actors. Those individuals (14,27,29,35,39,54,58,63,110,117,140,147,152,166,169,173,187) with larger Freeman's betweenness are the middlemen of the network; they have high social proficiency within the topic community and influence the dissemination of information and knowledge. Many individuals in the network need these "social influencers" to connect with other individuals.…”

“…Freeman's betweenness indicated that there were structural holes in the network. By analyzing structural hole-related indicators, we found that certain individuals (14,27,35,44,54,58,63,110,117,140,147,166,169,173,174,187,217) were located in the structural hole of the network and were the middlemen of the network. Individuals at such nodes can also connect two areas to obtain nonredundant information in the network.…”

“…In addition, users tend to pay more attention to informational and emotional attributes when forwarding information [34]. This feature is particularly prominent in public crisis events [35].…”