Thematic Correlation and Contextual Factors of Netizens' Information Needs During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

[Purpose/Significance] Identifying the contextual factors of information needs is of great significance for understanding the generation mechanism of information needs. [Method/Process] Based on the background of the outbreak of COVID-19, this study crawled the question data from the Baidu Zhidao between December 31 in 2019 and March 30 in 2020, using methods such as content analysis and co-occurrence network analysis to identify the themes of netizens' information needs and the associations between them, and discover the characteristics of different information need themes under various contextual factors. [Results/Conclusions] This study extracted 8 primary themes and 33 secondary themes to reflect the information needs of netizens during the COVID-19 pandemic. The top five information needs with the highest attention from netizens are: impacts, preventions, controls, knowledge and education, and symptoms and treatments. From the perspective of the correlation analysis between themes, the relationship between impacts and controls is the strongest, and worries about infection are closely related to symptoms and treatments. In addition, the contextual factors of netizens' information needs are mainly characters, regions, places, and activities. This research provides support for researches on the relationship between information needs and contexts of netizens in public health emergencies, and helps relevant departments provide information to the public in a timely, efficient and accurate manner.

Keywords

• information need|public health crisis|covid-19|content analysis|contextual factors