Study on the mechanism of public attention to a major event: The outbreak of COVID-19 in China

Abstract

This study focuses on public attention to major events, which has become an important topic in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the background of the global transmission of COVID-19, this study discusses the relationship between information shock and sustainable development, which is rarely mentioned before. By developing an appropriate theoretical model, we discuss how the level of public attention changes over time and with the severity of events. Then we use data on the daily clicks on a popular Chinese medical website to indicate public attention to the pandemic. Our analysis shows that, in the first half of 2020, the level of public attention is closely related to the scale of domestic transmission. The marginal effect of the domestic cases in the first wave is 1% to 0.217%. After the pandemic was largely under control in China, people still followed the latest news, but the scale of public attention to regional transmission diminished. And when the pandemic quickly and severely worsened in other countries, people in China were very attentive, that is, public attention increased. The time interval of social reaction we calculate is fairly stable, with a value of between 0 and 5 most of the time. The average time interval from January 2020 to May 2021 ranges from 1.76 days to 1.94 days, depending on the choice of models and parameters. This study suggests that raising public participation in dealing with the crisis over the long term would be enhanced in China by media encouragement to pay more attention to small-scale regional transmission and the course of the pandemic in other countries. The goal of sustainable development requires dealing with health and economic crises much better in the long term. Thus, the model and method used in the paper serve to enhance general interest.

Keywords: COVID-19; Chinese medical website; Daily clicks; Public attention; Sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Fig. 1

The time interval between the severity of the pandemic and the level of public attention: A theoretical model.

Fig. 2a

Domestic new cases and daily page views (January 23, 2020 - June 30, 2020).

Fig. 2b

Domestic new cases and daily page views (July 1, 2020 - December 31, 2020).

Fig. 2c

Domestic new cases and daily page views (January 1, 2021 - June 30, 2021).

Fig. 3

Daily new cases in mainland China (January 23, 2020 - June 30, 2021).

Fig. 4a

The time interval for Wave 1 (February 13, 2020 - June 4, 2020).

Fig. 4b

The time interval for Wave 2 (July 29, 2020 - December 31, 2020).

Fig. 4c

The time interval for Wave 3 (January 14, 2021 - May 23, 2021).