Background Various online rumors have led to inappropriate behaviors among the public in response to the COVID-19 epidemic in China. These rumors adversely affect people’s physical and mental health. Therefore, a better understanding of the relationship between public emotions and rumors during the epidemic may help generate useful strategies for guiding public emotions and dispelling rumors. Objective This study aimed to explore whether public emotions are related to the dissemination of online rumors in the context of COVID-19. Methods We used the web-crawling tool Scrapy to gather data published by People’s Daily on Sina Weibo, a popular social media platform in China, after January 8, 2020. Netizens’ comments under each Weibo post were collected. Nearly 1 million comments thus collected were divided into 5 categories: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and neutral, based on the underlying emotional information identified and extracted from the comments by using a manual identification process. Data on rumors spread online were collected through Tencent’s Jiaozhen platform. Time-lagged cross-correlation analyses were performed to examine the relationship between public emotions and rumors. Results Our results indicated that the angrier the public felt, the more rumors there would likely be (r=0.48, P<.001). Similar results were observed for the relationship between fear and rumors (r=0.51, P<.001) and between sadness and rumors (r=0.47, P<.001). Furthermore, we found a positive correlation between happiness and rumors, with happiness lagging the emergence of rumors by 1 day (r=0.56, P<.001). In addition, our data showed a significant positive correlation between fear and fearful rumors (r=0.34, P=.02). Conclusions Our findings confirm that public emotions are related to the rumors spread online in the context of COVID-19 in China. Moreover, these findings provide several suggestions, such as the use of web-based monitoring methods, for relevant authorities and policy makers to guide public emotions and behavior during this public health emergency.
In this study, we investigate the mediating effects of children’s Internet use on the relationship between family socioeconomic status and their academic achievement, and whether the mediating effects vary across different academic subjects. We used the data from the China Family Panel Studies on the socioeconomic status of children's families, children’s Internet use, and their academic performance. In the 2014 sample, there were 2,686 participants (females=1,272). In 2016, there were 2,330 participants (females=1,069), and in 2018, there were 2,485 participants (females=1,151). The socioeconomic status and the Internet use were measured by a questionnaire. Standardized tests measured the academic performance. Our findings showed that family socioeconomic status was positively related to math performance, but not significantly related to Chinese performance. The results also indicated that Internet use did not significantly mediate the relationship between family socioeconomic status in 2014 and math performance in 2016, while the frequency of Internet use to study in 2016 partly mediated the relationship between family socioeconomic status in 2016 and math performance in 2018. Our findings suggest that Internet use can only mediate the relationship between family socioeconomic status and math performance and the mediating effects become stronger over time. En este estudio, investigamos los efectos mediadores del uso de Internet por parte de los niños en la relación entre el nivel socioeconómico de la familia y su éxito académico y si los efectos mediadores varían entre diferentes disciplinas académicas. Usamos los datos de Estudios de Paneles de las Familias Chinas sobre el nivel socioeconómico de las familias de los niños, el uso de Internet por parte de los niños y su rendimiento académico. Hubo 2.686 participantes en 2014 (mujeres=1.272), 2.330 participantes (mujeres=1.069) en 2016 y 2.485 participantes (mujeres=1.151) en 2018. El estado socioeconómico y el uso de Internet se midieron mediante un cuestionario. Las pruebas estandarizadas midieron el rendimiento académico. Nuestros hallazgos mostraron que el nivel socioeconómico de la familia se relaciona positivamente con el éxito en matemáticas, pero no significativamente con los puntajes chinos. Los resultados indicaron que el uso de Internet no mediaba en la relación entre el estatus socioeconómico familiar en 2014 y el rendimiento matemático en 2016, mientras que la frecuencia de uso de Internet para estudiar en 2016 mediaba en parte la relación entre el estatus socioeconómico familiar en 2016 y el rendimiento matemático en 2018. Nuestros hallazgos proponen que el uso de Internet sólo puede mediar en la relación entre el nivel socioeconómico de la familia y el éxito en matemáticas, y los efectos mediadores se vuelven más fuertes con el paso del tiempo.
BACKGROUND In the present study, we aim to explore whether public emotions are related to the dissemination of emotional online comments and at times online rumors in the context of COVID-19. OBJECTIVE To explore whether public emotions are related to the dissemination of emotional online comments and at times online rumors in the context of COVID-19. METHODS We used Scrapy to gather the data from Weibo published by People's Daily after January 8, 2020, and netizens’ comments under each Weibo post. Nearly one million comments were divided into five categories (anger, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral) according to the emotional information in these contents by manual identification. Rumors data was collected through a platform “Tencent myth busters”. Cross-correlations analysis was used to examine the relationship between public emotions and rumors. RESULTS The results indicated that the angrier the public got, the more rumors there would be. Similar findings were found in the relationship between fear and rumors and the relationship between sadness and rumors. Furthermore, we found that happiness would lag behind by one day with the increase of rumors. In addition, our data showed that there was a significant positive correlation between fear and fearful rumors. CONCLUSIONS Our findings provide supportive evidence to the relationship between Public Emotions and Rumors in the Context of COVID-19.
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