Original title: The Impact of COVID-19 Epidemic Declaration on Psychological Consequences: A Study on Active Weibo Users
Researchers examined Weibo posts from active users before and after the COVID-19 epidemic declaration on 20 January 2020. Machine-learning models estimated signs of emotions and thoughts, such as anxiety, happiness, concern about social risks, and life satisfaction. The researchers compared each user's scores across the two periods. After the declaration, negative emotions and concern about social risks rose, while happiness and life satisfaction fell.
Imagine keeping a diary before and after a major event in your town. The hard part is telling whether your entries show a real change or just different topics on different days. In this paper, Weibo posts are the diary, and comparing the same users' posts across the two periods helps show how their expressed feelings and concerns changed.
The findings point to short-term changes in the feelings and concerns of people posting on Weibo after the declaration. They may help policy makers and clinical practitioners prepare responses, though the results describe active Weibo users rather than everyone.
The abstract describes active Weibo users, so it does not establish that the same changes occurred across the whole population. It reports short-term differences around the declaration and does not establish that the declaration itself caused them or how long they lasted.
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The Impact of COVID-19 Epidemic Declaration on Psychological Consequences: A Study on Active Weibo Users — Sijia Li, Yilin Wang, Jia Xue et al. — International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health — doi:10.3390/ijerph17062032
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.