Characterizing Weibo Social Media Posts From Wuhan, China During the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Qualitative Content Analysis

Abstract

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has reached 40 million confirmed cases worldwide. Given its rapid progression, it is important to examine its origins to better understand how people’s knowledge, attitudes, and reactions have evolved over time. One method is to use data mining of social media conversations related to information exposure and self-reported user experiences. Objective This study aims to characterize the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of social media users located at the initial epicenter of the outbreak by analyzing data from the Sina Weibo platform in Chinese. Methods We used web scraping to collect public Weibo posts from December 31, 2019, to January 20, 2020, from users located in Wuhan City that contained COVID-19–related keywords. We then manually annotated all posts using an inductive content coding approach to identify specific information sources and key themes including news and knowledge about the outbreak, public sentiment, and public reaction to control and response measures. Results We identified 10,159 COVID-19 posts from 8703 unique Weibo users. Among our three parent classification areas, 67.22% (n=6829) included news and knowledge posts, 69.72% (n=7083) included public sentiment, and 47.87% (n=4863) included public reaction and self-reported behavior. Many of these themes were expressed concurrently in the same Weibo post. Subtopics for news and knowledge posts followed four distinct timelines and evidenced an escalation of the outbreak’s seriousness as more information became available. Public sentiment primarily focused on expressions of anxiety, though some expressions of anger and even positive sentiment were also detected. Public reaction included both protective and elevated health risk behavior. Conclusions Between the announcement of pneumonia and respiratory illness of unknown origin in late December 2019 and the discovery of human-to-human transmission on January 20, 2020, we observed a high volume of public anxiety and confusion about COVID-19, including different reactions to the news by users, negative sentiment after being exposed to information, and public reaction that translated to self-reported behavior. These findings provide early insight into changing knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors about COVID-19, and have the potential to inform future outbreak communication, response, and policy making in China and beyond.

Characterizing the COVID-19 Infodemic on Chinese Social Media: Exploratory Study

“…Moreover, social media is one of the most popular media for information dissemination and distribution, with 20%-87% usage surging during the crisis [ 23 ]. Recently, Oxford’s Reuters Institute investigated the dissemination of misinformation and found that a majority (88%) of the misinformation about COVID-19 originated from social media [ 24 ]. In Italy, approximately 46,000 posts posted per day on social media in March 2020 were linked to COVID-19 misinformation [ 25 ].…”

Designing a conceptual framework for misinformation on social media: a qualitative study on COVID-19

“…In December 2019, the novel coronavirus originated from Wuhan, China and quickly emerged as the greatest global public health threat [1][2][3][4]. Following this, scientists mobilized to investigate different aspects of the pandemic, including its potential consequences for societies using online data [5].…”

A longitudinal and geospatial analysis of COVID-19 tweets during the early outbreak period in the United States

“…We specifically choose to examine the early outbreak period in the United States as it represents a critical time frame of formation of public perception, knowledge dissemination, and initial behavior adaptation towards public health interventions, which can influence subsequent behaviors and attitudes towards the pandemic in later stages [25]. Other studies have similarly examined other social media platforms (e.g., Chinese microblogging platform Weibo) at the early stages of COVID-19 in other countries for public perception and sentiment, such as in Wuhan City, China, where the outbreak originated [26][27][28].…”