What the study found
The study found that public opinion on Sina Weibo during Typhoon Muifa was closely linked to the typhoon’s activity. Four main discussion themes appeared: typhoon impact, weather conditions, meteorological information, and disaster response.
Why the authors say this matters
The authors conclude that social media can serve as a real-time indicator of localized public sentiment during disasters. They also suggest that official risk narratives play a key role in shaping public attention and that the findings may inform targeted risk communication and emergency management strategies.
What the researchers tested
The researchers analyzed 19,417 microblog posts from Sina Weibo about Typhoon Muifa, which made four landfalls in China. They used Latent Dirichlet Allocation (a topic-modeling method for finding themes in text), sentiment analysis, and correlation statistics to examine how public attention and discourse changed with the typhoon.
What worked and what didn't
Four dominant topic categories were identified, and personal accounts mainly discussed typhoon impact and weather conditions, while official accounts mainly covered meteorological information and disaster response. Daily total precipitation was strongly positively correlated with the number of microblog posts overall (R 2 = 0.84, q < 0.001), especially in Zhejiang, Shanghai, Shandong, and Liaoning (q < 0.05), and negative sentiment was also highly correlated with rising precipitation, largely through the typhoon impact topic.
What to keep in mind
The abstract does not describe limits beyond the study’s focus on Sina Weibo posts during one typhoon event. The findings therefore apply to this specific case study and the available summary does not report additional caveats.
Key points
- The study examined 19,417 Sina Weibo posts about Typhoon Muifa.
- Four main discussion themes were identified: typhoon impact, weather conditions, meteorological information, and disaster response.
- Personal accounts were more common in impact and weather discussions, while official accounts dominated meteorological information and disaster response.
- Daily precipitation was strongly positively correlated with the number of posts overall.
- Negative sentiment also increased with rising precipitation, mainly in the typhoon impact topic.
Disclosure
- Research title:
- Weibo sentiment tracked Typhoon Muifa’s precipitation and impacts
- Authors:
- Yanran Sun, Qian Wang, Yongchang Zhu, Jing Xu, Lu Liu, Chunyi Xiang, Chuanhai Qian
- Institutions:
- Beijing Information Science & Technology University, China Meteorological Administration, China Meteorological Administration, China Meteorological Administration, China Meteorological Administration, Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences
- Publication date:
- 2026-02-23
- OpenAlex record:
- View
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