Social Media User Behavior and Emotions during Crisis Events

Abstract

The wide availability of smart mobile devices and Web 2.0 services has allowed people to easily access news, spread information, and express their opinions and emotions using various social media platforms. However, because of the ease of joining these sites, people also use them to spread rumors and vent their emotions, with the social platforms often playing a facilitation role. This paper collected more than 190,000 messages published on the Chinese Sina-Weibo platform to examine social media user behaviors and emotions during an emergency, with a particular research focus on the “Dr. Li Wenliang” reports associated with the COVID-19 epidemic in China. The verified accounts were found to have the strongest interactions with users, and the sentiment analysis revealed that the news from government agencies had a positive user effect and the national media and trusted experts were more favored by users in an emergency. This research provides a new perspective on trust and the use of social media platforms in crises, and therefore offers some guidance to government agencies.

The Astroworld tragedy as an argument for proactive crisis management

“…Whatever model practitioners find most useful, this study has demonstrated that social media has raised the stakes for crisis management. Organizations cannot afford to ignore the information flowing freely and urgently into the social realms, especially during the response stage (Gu et al, 2022). Without proper planning, social media will be ignored during the response stage as the organization is overwhelmed by the crisis.…”

Extracting Useful Emergency Information from Social Media: A Method Integrating Machine Learning and Rule-Based Classification

“…EMAs could gather first-hand information related to an emergency from social media, including people's emotions, messages of support, and political content, which can more intuitively display experiences, views, and opinions to directly inform emergency rescue operations [24]. After the breakout of COVID-19 in Wuhan, content and sentiment analyses were applied to Chinese microblogging UGCs to understand people's behaviors and emotions in response to the death of Dr. Wenliang Li [25]. Pradeepa et al [26] believed that EMAs could monitor the public's attitudes towards emergencies and take actions quickly by collecting and analyzing social media UGCs.…”

Social media use for coping with stress and psychological adjustment: A transactional model of stress and coping perspective

“…Next, social isolation may occur due to lockdowns, with the loss of face-to-face interaction resulting in negative emotions ( Qiu et al, 2020 ). As individuals can choose to be fully or partially anonymous on social media, they may view these platforms as safe places to freely express their negative emotions during the pandemic ( Gu et al, 2022 ). Moreover, for individuals who perceive their offline realities as unfulfilling due to social restrictions, social media can serve as an alternative avenue for them to both maintain existing social bonds and form new ones ( O’Day and Heimberg, 2021 ).…”