Spatial–temporal differences in disaster perception and response among new media users and the influence factors: a case study of the Shouguang Flood in Shandong province

Abstract

When human beings cannot avoid extreme climate disasters, it is widely accepted to take measures to address climate change. Research on ordinary people’s perception of disasters is not only helpful in formulating coping strategies, but also in improving the sustainable development of man and nature. With the rise of new media, more and more ordinary people can pay attention to disasters and express their opinions in time. From the perspective of the Weibo topic “Shouguang Flood,” web crawler is used to obtain the perception and comments of new media users in various provinces of China on the storm flood. Based on the Grounded theory, with the help of text analysis, user comments are divided into four latitudes: attention, cognition, response, and trust, and an index system is constructed. Then, the Likert scale method is used to assign scores to the corresponding indicators. Finally, the new media users’ perception of storm flood disasters is evaluated. The results show that users have more cognitive comments on the disaster in the middle and early periods after the disaster, and they are more inclined to express their emotions and attitudes and evaluate the government’s response to disasters in the middle and later periods. On the whole, new media users can clearly understand the severity of disasters but have low-risk awareness. At the beginning of the disaster, a large number of users show positive emotions in response to the disaster, but over time, low trust causes users to become negative. There are obvious differences in the perception of users in different regions. Users in disaster areas have higher levels of cognition and response than users in non-disaster areas. The psychological distance on the Internet and the effect of risk communication may be the main factors that cause the temporal and spatial differences in the perception of storms flood by new media users. Compared with questionnaires, perception data on the Internet can not only broaden the scope of research in this field, but also provide a timely understanding of the status quo of the general public’s perception of disasters.