A Study of Public Attitudes toward Shanghai’s Image under the Influence of COVID-19: Evidence from Comments on Sina Weibo

Guo, Yanlong; Zu, Lan; Chen, Denghang; Zhang, Han

doi:10.3390/ijerph20032297

Open AccessArticle

A Study of Public Attitudes toward Shanghai’s Image under the Influence of COVID-19: Evidence from Comments on Sina Weibo

¹

Social Innovation Design Research Centre, Anhui University, Hefei 203106, China

²

Anhui Institute of Contemporary Studies, Anhui Academy of Social Sciences, Hefei 203106, China

³

Department of Science and Technology Communication, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 203106, China

⁴

College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266000, China

^*

Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2023, 20(3), 2297; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20032297

Submission received: 9 December 2022 / Revised: 21 January 2023 / Accepted: 24 January 2023 / Published: 27 January 2023

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Abstract

With the advent of the Internet era, Chinese users tend to choose to express their opinions on social media platforms represented by Sina Weibo. The changes in people’s emotions toward cities from the microblogging texts can reflect the image of cities presented on mainstream social media, and thus target a good image of cities. In this paper, we collected microblog data containing “Shanghai” from 1 January 2019 to 1 September 2022 by Python technology, and we used three methods: Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency keyword statistics, Latent Dirichlet Allocation theme model construction, and sentiment analysis by Zhiwang Sentiment Dictionary. We also explore the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on Shanghai’s urban image in the context of the “Shanghai Territorial Static Management”, an important public opinion topic during the COVID-19 epidemic. The results of the study show that the “Shanghai-wide static management” of COVID-19 epidemic has significantly reduced the public’s perception of Shanghai and negatively affected the city’s image. By analyzing the data results, we summarize the basic characteristics of Shanghai’s city image and provide strategies for communicating Shanghai’s city image in the post-epidemic era.

Keywords: city image; COVID-19 epidemic; social media; LDA; sentiment analysis

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MDPI and ACS Style

Guo, Y.; Zu, L.; Chen, D.; Zhang, H. A Study of Public Attitudes toward Shanghai’s Image under the Influence of COVID-19: Evidence from Comments on Sina Weibo. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2023, 20, 2297. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20032297

AMA Style

Guo Y, Zu L, Chen D, Zhang H. A Study of Public Attitudes toward Shanghai’s Image under the Influence of COVID-19: Evidence from Comments on Sina Weibo. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2023; 20(3):2297. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20032297

Chicago/Turabian Style

Guo, Yanlong, Lan Zu, Denghang Chen, and Han Zhang. 2023. "A Study of Public Attitudes toward Shanghai’s Image under the Influence of COVID-19: Evidence from Comments on Sina Weibo" International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 20, no. 3: 2297. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20032297

APA Style

Guo, Y., Zu, L., Chen, D., & Zhang, H. (2023). A Study of Public Attitudes toward Shanghai’s Image under the Influence of COVID-19: Evidence from Comments on Sina Weibo. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(3), 2297. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20032297

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A Study of Public Attitudes toward Shanghai’s Image under the Influence of COVID-19: Evidence from Comments on Sina Weibo

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