Topic modeling and sentiment analysis of Chinese people’s attitudes toward volunteerism amid the COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has created an urgent need for volunteers to complement overwhelmed public health systems. This study aims to explore Chinese people’s attitudes toward volunteerism amid the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, we identify the latent topics in volunteerism-related microblogs on Weib...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2022-11-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1064372/full |
| _version_ | 1811244190182408192 |
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| author | Ruheng Yin Jing Wu Rui Tian Feng Gan |
| author_facet | Ruheng Yin Jing Wu Rui Tian Feng Gan |
| author_sort | Ruheng Yin |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The COVID-19 pandemic has created an urgent need for volunteers to complement overwhelmed public health systems. This study aims to explore Chinese people’s attitudes toward volunteerism amid the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, we identify the latent topics in volunteerism-related microblogs on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter using the topic modeling analysis via Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). To further investigate the public sentiment toward the topics generated by LDA, we also conducted sentiment analysis on the sample posts using the open-source natural language processing (NLP) technique from Baidu. Through an in-depth analysis of 91,933 Weibo posts, this study captures 10 topics that are, in turn, distributed into five factors associated with volunteerism in China as motive fulfillment (n = 31,661, 34.44%), fear of COVID-19 (n = 22,597, 24.58%), individual characteristic (n = 17,688, 19.24%), government support (n = 15,482, 16.84%), and community effect (n = 4,505, 4.90%). The results show that motive fulfillment, government support, and community effect are the factors that could enhance positive attitudes toward volunteerism since the topics related to these factors report high proportions of positive emotion. Fear of COVID-19 and individual characteristic are the factors inducing negative sentiment toward volunteerism as the topics related to these factors show relatively high proportions of negative emotion. The provision of tailored strategies based on the factors could potentially enhance Chinese people’s willingness to participate in volunteer activities during the COVID-19 pandemic. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-12T14:21:41Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-2509413df1c742bf982ee31b45c70574 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-12T14:21:41Z |
| publishDate | 2022-11-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-2509413df1c742bf982ee31b45c705742022-12-22T03:29:34ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782022-11-011310.3389/fpsyg.2022.10643721064372Topic modeling and sentiment analysis of Chinese people’s attitudes toward volunteerism amid the COVID-19 pandemicRuheng Yin0Jing Wu1Rui Tian2Feng Gan3School of Art, Culture and Tourism Industry Think Tank Chinese Art Evaluation Institute, Southeast University, Nanjing, ChinaSchool of Sociology and Population Studies, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, ChinaSchool of Art, Culture and Tourism Industry Think Tank Chinese Art Evaluation Institute, Southeast University, Nanjing, ChinaSchool of Art, Culture and Tourism Industry Think Tank Chinese Art Evaluation Institute, Southeast University, Nanjing, ChinaThe COVID-19 pandemic has created an urgent need for volunteers to complement overwhelmed public health systems. This study aims to explore Chinese people’s attitudes toward volunteerism amid the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, we identify the latent topics in volunteerism-related microblogs on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter using the topic modeling analysis via Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). To further investigate the public sentiment toward the topics generated by LDA, we also conducted sentiment analysis on the sample posts using the open-source natural language processing (NLP) technique from Baidu. Through an in-depth analysis of 91,933 Weibo posts, this study captures 10 topics that are, in turn, distributed into five factors associated with volunteerism in China as motive fulfillment (n = 31,661, 34.44%), fear of COVID-19 (n = 22,597, 24.58%), individual characteristic (n = 17,688, 19.24%), government support (n = 15,482, 16.84%), and community effect (n = 4,505, 4.90%). The results show that motive fulfillment, government support, and community effect are the factors that could enhance positive attitudes toward volunteerism since the topics related to these factors report high proportions of positive emotion. Fear of COVID-19 and individual characteristic are the factors inducing negative sentiment toward volunteerism as the topics related to these factors show relatively high proportions of negative emotion. The provision of tailored strategies based on the factors could potentially enhance Chinese people’s willingness to participate in volunteer activities during the COVID-19 pandemic.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1064372/fullvolunteerismCOVID-19ChinaWeibotopic modeling analysisLDA |
| spellingShingle | Ruheng Yin Jing Wu Rui Tian Feng Gan Topic modeling and sentiment analysis of Chinese people’s attitudes toward volunteerism amid the COVID-19 pandemic Frontiers in Psychology volunteerism COVID-19 China topic modeling analysis LDA |
| title | Topic modeling and sentiment analysis of Chinese people’s attitudes toward volunteerism amid the COVID-19 pandemic |
| title_full | Topic modeling and sentiment analysis of Chinese people’s attitudes toward volunteerism amid the COVID-19 pandemic |
| title_fullStr | Topic modeling and sentiment analysis of Chinese people’s attitudes toward volunteerism amid the COVID-19 pandemic |
| title_full_unstemmed | Topic modeling and sentiment analysis of Chinese people’s attitudes toward volunteerism amid the COVID-19 pandemic |
| title_short | Topic modeling and sentiment analysis of Chinese people’s attitudes toward volunteerism amid the COVID-19 pandemic |
| title_sort | topic modeling and sentiment analysis of chinese people s attitudes toward volunteerism amid the covid 19 pandemic |
| topic | volunteerism COVID-19 China topic modeling analysis LDA |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1064372/full |
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