ArticleBMC public health2023
"Help Us!": a content analysis of COVID-19 help-seeking posts on Weibo during the first lockdown.
Article in BMC public health, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Understanding Public Emotions: Spatiotemporal Dynamics in the Post-Pandemic Era Through Weibo Data.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- A multidimensional comparative study of help-seeking messages on Weibo under different stages of COVID-19 pandemic in China.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
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4 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
backgroundSocial media is playing an increasingly important role in public emergencies for help-seekers, especially during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Wuhan, China, firstly official reported COVID-19 cases and implemented lockdown measures to prevent the spread of the virus. People during the first lockdown were restricted from seeking help face-to-face. Social media is more prominent as an online tool for people seeking help, especially for patients, than in other stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
objectiveThis study aimed to explore the urgent needs presented in help-seeking posts in Wuhan during the first COVID-19 lockdown, the content features of these posts, and how they influenced online user engagement.
methodsThis study collected posts from Weibo posted with specific help tags during the first COVID-19 lockdown in Wuhan: from 23 January 2020 to 24 March 2020, and eventually received 2055 data, including textual content, comments, retweets, and publishing location. Content analysis was conducted, and manual coding was performed on help-seeking typology, narrative mode, narrative subject, and emotional valence.
resultsThe result showed that help-seeking posts primarily were seeking medical (97.7%). Features of these posts were mainly adopting a mixed narrative mode (46.4%), released by relatives of patients (61.7%), and expressing negative emotions (93.2%). Chi-square tests suggested that help-seeking posts with mixed narrative modes released by relatives express more frequent negative emotions. Results of negative binomial regression indicated posts of seeking information (B = 0.52, p < .001, e
conclusionsThis study provides evidence of what actual public demands are to be considered and addressed by governments and public administrators before implementing closure and lockdown policies to limit the spread of the virus. Meanwhile, our findings offer strategies for people help-seeking on social media in similar public health emergencies.
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