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. 2020 Oct;14(5):e24-e27.
doi: 10.1017/dmp.2020.68. Epub 2020 Apr 3.

Limited Early Warnings and Public Attention to Coronavirus Disease 2019 in China, January-February, 2020: A Longitudinal Cohort of Randomly Sampled Weibo Users

Yuner Zhu  1 , King-Wa Fu  1 , Karen A Grépin  2 , Hai Liang  3 , Isaac Chun-Hai Fung  4
Affiliations

Limited Early Warnings and Public Attention to Coronavirus Disease 2019 in China, January-February, 2020: A Longitudinal Cohort of Randomly Sampled Weibo Users

Yuner Zhu et al. Disaster Med Public Health Prep. 2020 Oct.

Abstract

Objective: Awareness and attentiveness have implications for the acceptance and adoption of disease prevention and control measures. Social media posts provide a record of the public's attention to an outbreak. To measure the attention of Chinese netizens to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a pre-established nationally representative cohort of Weibo users was searched for COVID-19-related key words in their posts.

Methods: COVID-19-related posts (N = 1101) were retrieved from a longitudinal cohort of 52 268 randomly sampled Weibo accounts (December 31, 2019-February 12, 2020).

Results: Attention to COVID-19 was limited prior to China openly acknowledging human-to-human transmission on January 20. Following this date, attention quickly increased and has remained high over time. Particularly high levels of social media traffic appeared around when Wuhan was first placed in quarantine (January 23-24, 8-9% of the overall posts), when a scandal associated with the Red Cross Society of China occurred (February 1, 8%), and, following the death of Dr Li Wenliang (February 6-7, 11%), one of the whistleblowers who was reprimanded by the Chinese police in early January for discussing this outbreak online.

Conclusion: Limited early warnings represent missed opportunities to engage citizens earlier in the outbreak. Governments should more proactively communicate early warnings to the public in a transparent manner.

Keywords: Weibo; awareness; coronavirus; health communication; social media.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Time Series of Percentage of Daily Weibo Posts Pertinent to COVID-19 Posted by a Cohort of Randomly Sampled Weibo Users, and the Daily Cumulative Number of Confirmed Cases From December 31, 2019, Through February 12, 2020.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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