Suchergebnisse

Social media has been applied to all natural disaster risk-reduction phases, including pre-warning, response, and recovery. However, using it to accurately acquire and reveal public sentiment during a disaster still presents a significant challenge. To explore public sentiment in depth during a disaster, this study analyzed Sina-Weibo (Weibo) texts in terms of space, time, and content related to the 2018 Shouguang flood, which caused casualties and economic losses, arousing widespread public concern in China. The temporal changes within six-hour intervals and spatial distribution on sub-district and city levels of flood-related Weibo were analyzed. Based on the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model and the Random Forest (RF) algorithm, a topic extraction and classification model was built to hierarchically identify six flood-relevant topics and nine types of public sentiment responses in Weibo texts. The majority of Weibo texts about the Shouguang flood were related to &ldquo ; public sentiment&rdquo ; among which &ldquo ; questioning the government and media&rdquo ; was the most commonly expressed. The Weibo text numbers varied over time for different topics and sentiments that corresponded to the different developmental stages of the flood. On a sub-district level, the spatial distribution of flood-relevant Weibo was mainly concentrated in high population areas in the south-central and eastern parts of Shouguang, near the river and the downtown area. At the city level, the Weibo texts were mainly distributed in Beijing and cities in the Shandong Province, centering in Weifang City. The results indicated that the classification model developed in this study was accurate and viable for analyzing social media texts during a disaster. The findings can be used to help researchers, public servants, and officials to better understand public sentiments towards disaster events, to accelerate disaster responses, and to support post-disaster management.

The outbreak of Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a grave global public health emergency. Nowadays, social media has become the main channel through which the public can obtain information and express their opinions and feelings. This study explored public opinion in the early stages of COVID-19 in China by analyzing Sina-Weibo (a Twitter-like microblogging system in China) texts in terms of space, time, and content. Temporal changes within one-hour intervals and the spatial distribution of COVID-19-related Weibo texts were analyzed. Based on the latent Dirichlet allocation model and the random forest algorithm, a topic extraction and classification model was developed to hierarchically identify seven COVID-19-relevant topics and 13 sub-topics from Weibo texts. The results indicate that the number of Weibo texts varied over time for different topics and sub-topics corresponding with the different developmental stages of the event. The spatial distribution of COVID-19-relevant Weibo was mainly concentrated in Wuhan, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, and the Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration. There is a synchronization between frequent daily discussions on Weibo and the trend of the COVID-19 outbreak in the real world. Public response is very sensitive to the epidemic and significant social events, especially in urban agglomerations with convenient transportation and a large population. The timely dissemination and updating of epidemic-related information and the popularization of such information by the government can contribute to stabilizing public sentiments. However, the surge of public demand and the hysteresis of social support demonstrated that the allocation of medical resources was under enormous pressure in the early stage of the epidemic. It is suggested that the government should strengthen the response in terms of public opinion and epidemic prevention and exert control in key epidemic areas, urban agglomerations, and transboundary areas at the province level. In controlling the crisis, accurate response countermeasures should be formulated following public help demands. The findings can help government and emergency agencies to better understand the public opinion and sentiments towards COVID-19, to accelerate emergency responses, and to support post-disaster management.

The outbreak of Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a grave global public health emergency. Nowadays, social media has become the main channel through which the public can obtain information and express their opinions and feelings. This study explored public opinion in the early stages of COVID-19 in China by analyzing Sina-Weibo (a Twitter-like microblogging system in China) texts in terms of space, time, and content. Temporal changes within one-hour intervals and the spatial distribution of COVID-19-related Weibo texts were analyzed. Based on the latent Dirichlet allocation model and the random forest algorithm, a topic extraction and classification model was developed to hierarchically identify seven COVID-19-relevant topics and 13 sub-topics from Weibo texts. The results indicate that the number of Weibo texts varied over time for different topics and sub-topics corresponding with the different developmental stages of the event. The spatial distribution of COVID-19-relevant Weibo was mainly concentrated in Wuhan, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, and the Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomeration. There is a synchronization between frequent daily discussions on Weibo and the trend of the COVID-19 outbreak in the real world. Public response is very sensitive to the epidemic and significant social events, especially in urban agglomerations with convenient transportation and a large population. The timely dissemination and updating of epidemic-related information and the popularization of such information by the government can contribute to stabilizing public sentiments. However, the surge of public demand and the hysteresis of social support demonstrated that the allocation of medical resources was under enormous pressure in the early stage of the epidemic. It is suggested that the government should strengthen the response in terms of public opinion and epidemic prevention and exert control in key epidemic areas, urban agglomerations, and transboundary areas at the province level. In controlling the crisis, accurate response countermeasures should be formulated following public help demands. The findings can help government and emergency agencies to better understand the public opinion and sentiments towards COVID-19, to accelerate emergency responses, and to support post-disaster management.