Differences in User Information Behavior between Official Media and Private Media during the COVID‐19 Pandemic
Corresponding author.
Issue date 2022.
This article is being made freely available through PubMed Central as part of the COVID-19 public health emergency response. It can be used for unrestricted research re-use and analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source, for the duration of the public health emergency.
ABSTRACT
Weibo is a widely used social media platform showing all kinds of information related to the COVID‐19 pandemic promptly in China. Official media and private media are two typical types of media on Weibo. Due to the different characteristics of these two media types, in the context of public health emergencies, it is worth exploring whether there are differences in the users' interactive behavior with information from these two types of media. This is of great significance to the integration and development of these two types of media.This study obtained data on the interaction behaviors of Weibo users with posts published by the two media types at various stages of the pandemic. Statistical analyses have confirmed significant differences in interaction behavior data between users and these two media types. In future research, based on the findings of this study, we will investigate the reasons behind these differences to provide relevant guidelines and suggestions for the release of different media in public health emergencies by conducting a deep dive analysis of user reviews.
Keywords: China, COVID‐19 pandemic, Official media, Private media, User information behavior, Weibo
INTRODUCTION
COVID‐19 is attacking the world, inflicting havoc on human health and the world economy. In the current context, people are in urgent need of relevant pandemic prevention knowledge and information (Hughes, 2009). Social networking platforms provide people with the means of collecting and disseminating information. As one of the biggest social network platforms in China, with 511 million active users, Weibo offers dynamic and timely interactions (Feng, 2017). Groups of people come together on this platform to acquire and to interact with information (Reynolds, 2005). During this period, various media accounts on Weibo, including official media (supported by the government) and private media (supported by private corporations and individuals), play an essential role in spreading important information on pandemics and in guiding public opinion. However, the different nature of these two media types means that users may show different interaction behaviors in their published posts of the same event. We collected relevant data to verify the differences in user information behavior between the two different media types,andfurther distinguished the differences at different stages of the pandemic.
METHOD
Pandemic Stage Division
According to “China's Action against COVID‐19,” a white paper issued by The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China, we divided the research phase into five parts. Selection of time nodes for the first four stages from the white paper included, incubation period (December 27, 2019 to January 19, 2020), outbreak period (January 20, 2020 to February 20, 2020), controlling period (February 21, 2020 to March 17, 2020), results appearing (March 18, 2020 to April 28, 2020). The fifth phase of the recovery period starts and ends from April 29, 2020 to September 5, 2020. Since 31 provinces and municipalities in China achieved zero new local cases for 20 consecutive days on September 5, 2020, it means that the pandemic was temporarily effectively controlled on this day.
Event Selection
To ensure the richness of the acquired data, according to the popularity of events provided by Weibo, the representative events selected at each stage are the most concerned hot events in the current period. Starting at the second stage, we selected the top five popular eventsin each stage based on the pageviews of the events, e.g., Shuanghuanglian could inhibit COVID‐19, this is Wuhan at 10 o'clock today, and Cinemas in low‐risk areas will open for business on July 20. It is noteworthy that the first stage was a special time when most media platforms did not realize that the pandemic was spreading, so the number of relevant popular events was minimal. For this reason, only one representative event, four new COVID‐19 cases in Wuhan, was selected at this stage.
Data Collection and Annotation
According to “China's Action against COVID‐19,” a white paper issued by The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China, we divided the research phase into five parts. Selection of time nodes for the first four stages from the white paper included, incubation period (December 27, 2019 to January 19, 2020), outbreak period (January 20, 2020 to February 20, 2020), controlling period (February 21, 2020 to March 17, 2020), results appearing (March 18, 2020 to April 28, 2020). The fifth phase of the recovery period starts and ends from April 29, 2020 to September 5, 2020. Since 31 provinces and municipalities in China achieved zero new local cases for 20 consecutive days on September 5, 2020, it means that the pandemic was temporarily effectively controlled on this day.
Data Analysis
In order to eliminate the influence brought by the number of followers on its posts, we calculated the 1/10,000 percentage of comments, thumbs‐up, and reposts of each blog post for the number of fans of each account, thereby obtaining the comment rate, thumbs‐up rate, and repost rate for each post. We analyzed the differences in these rates between the official media and the private media at various stages of the pandemic. Because the dimensions of the comment rate, thumbs‐up rate, and repost rate for these two media types are different, the rates were normalized. Normalized data does not follow the normal distribution. Therefore, the Mann–Whitney U test was used to analyze the differences.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Official media has a large number of fans. Therefore, the interaction ratio of official media is much smaller than that of private media. For a clear comparison of the interactions between users and these two types of media at different stages of the pandemic, Figure 1 separately shows the average comment rate, thumbs‐up rate, and repost rate of posts published by the two media types at each stage. Figure 1 shows that the peaks of the interaction of the two types of media are on the comment rate, but the peaks of the comment rate of the two types of media are at different stages. The official media took the lead in the fifth stage, the recovery stage. The comment rate obtained by the official media from the first stage to the third stage gradually increased, and it dropped suddenly in the fourth stage, but peaked in the fifth stage. In the private media, the comment rate dropped to a minimum in the third stage, reaching its peak in the fourth stage, the results appearing period, but plummeted in recovery stage.
Figure 1.
Average comment, thumbs‐up, and repost rate of official and private media posts at each stage
Table 1 shows the significant value of the difference between the comment rate, thumbs‐up rate, and repost rate of each stage for the two types of media. There are significant differences between the official media and private media in repost and comment rates as a whole. Specifically, there are significant differences in these rates in the fourth stages of the pandemic. There are significant differences in the comment rate and the repost rate in stages five. Stage 3 only has a significant difference in comment rate, and stage 2 only has a significant difference in thumb‐up rate.
Table 1.
The p‐values of the Mann–Whitney U test on the two types of media for each rate at each stage
| Stage of development | Repost rate | Comment rate | Thumbs‐up rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stage 1 | 0.779 | 0.678 | 0.429 |
| Stage 2 | 0.272 | 0.081 | ★ 0.016 |
| Stage 3 | 0.982 | ★ 0 | 0.138 |
| Stage 4 | ★ 0 | ★ 0 | ★ 0 |
| Stage 5 | ★ 0 | ★ 0 | 0.215 |
| Total | ★ 0 | 0.151 | ★ 0 |
To sum up, it can be seen that users are more willing to comment on official media during the recovery period, and comment on private media during the results appearing period. The difference in the comment content of the same event under different media types may be an important factor leading to the difference in comment rate. The next research plan is to combine the expressions of different media types on the same event, compare the differences in user comment topics, emotions, etc., and analyze the factors that affect users' behavior differences under different media types from the perspective of content characteristics.
CONCLUSION
This study found that at various periods in the development of the COVID‐19 pandemic, there were significant differences in the comments, thumbs‐up, and repost behaviors of Weibo users to posts published by official media and private media. The differences in user comments and bloggers ‘posts need further analysis.
Contributor Information
Li Lei, Email: leili@bnu.edu.cn.
Wang Xuyan, Email: wangxuyan0105@163.com.
Liu Shujun, Email: shujun_liu@mail.bnu.edu.cn.
Huang Kun, Email: huangkun@bnu.edu.cn.
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