The Outbreak, direction and guidance of sentiment: an Analysis of COVID-19 public sentiment in China

Abstract

Since the end of 2019, the COVID-19 epidemic broke out suddenly and spread rapidly around the world. This sudden disease has seriously affected the conventional social system, especially after the media have been controlled, people cannot get sufficient and correct information, at the same time, rumors have spread widely and rapidly on the Internet, these factors led to public panic. Based on the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), we analyze 554 comments of users in the two WeChat official accounts of Caixin and the Beijing News during the period of COVID-19, exploring the relationship between public sentiment and crisis type. The findings reveal the characteristics of crisis events causing public sentiment under different attribution types and form a preliminary model of crisis emotion guidance.