Abstract
BackgroundVarious 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.ObjectiveThis study aimed to explore whether public emotions are related to the dissemination of online rumors in the context of COVID-19.MethodsWe 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.ResultsOur 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).ConclusionsOur 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.
Highlights
In December 2019, the earliest cases of COVID-19 were reported in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China
This study aimed to explore whether public emotions are related to the dissemination of online rumors in the context of COVID-19
During COVID-19 outbreaks in different parts of the world, there was a proliferation of emotional comments and occasional rumors posted on the internet
Summary
In December 2019, the earliest cases of COVID-19 were reported in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. 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. Objective: This study aimed to explore whether public emotions are related to the dissemination of online rumors in the context of COVID-19. Conclusions: Our findings confirm that public emotions are related to the rumors spread online in the context of COVID-19 in China. 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
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