![]() ![]() This article applies text analysis techniques to analyze two social media platforms, Twitter and Weibo, and provides cross-platform comparisons of the discourse in these two social media ecosystems. These online discourses contain references to personal emotions and valuable information from different countries, but little research attention has been given to the similarities and differences of online discourse in different countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. As individuals around the world are stakeholders and risk takers under direct threat, they have paid attention to the development of the COVID-19 pandemic and taken part in intense online discussions. The COVID-19 pandemic provides a suitable example for a comparative thematic research. Unlike other types of emergencies, public health events do not affect a fixed population and are difficult to predict in terms of area and mode of occurrence. Since the end of 2019, the outbreak of coronavirus (referred to as COVID-19) has caused a global public health crisis which has had a serious impact on international society. Moreover, few issues generate worldwide interest, so the opportunities to perform comparative study in different countries are also limited. ![]() Due to this reason, although Chinese social media users occupy an important position in the global Internet, they have received relatively less attention. It is particularly noteworthy that the Chinese state separates its citizens from the rest of the world through its firewall this information control method may influence the expression of online discourse. However, existing studies of social media have been conducted using different methods in different countries, while parallel comparative studies conducted using the same methods in different countries to identify similarities and differences are still rare. Additionally, online discourse about the same issues can be different on different social media platforms due to users’ differing societies, politics, and cultures. The huge volume of data available on social media can help us understand the feelings of users about a certain issue or event, as these platforms store individual discourse. Social media platforms such as Twitter and Weibo are regarded as interactive communication tools for public debate and discourse that reduce the cost of communication between users thus, individuals can express their own opinions on public issues and interact with likeminded people spontaneously. ![]() Additionally, on the Twitter platform many political actors act as opinion leaders, while on the Weibo platform official media and government accounts control the release of information. The issues focused on in online discourse have a strong relationship with the development of the crisis in different countries. Regarding the status of the COVID-19 pandemic, users of Twitter tend to pay more attention to the economic situation while users of Weibo pay more attention to public health. Finally, we find that online discourse reflects the crisis lifecycle according to the stage of COVID-19 in China and the US. Social Network Analysis (SNA) allows us to discover the opinion leader on the two different platforms. Then, we use a topic modeling technique, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), to identify the most common issues posted by users and temporal analysis to research the issue’s trend. In this study, we combine the crisis lifecycle and opinion leader concepts and use data mining and a set of predefined search terms (coronavirus and COVID-19) to investigate discourse on Twitter (101,271 tweets) and Sina Weibo (92,037 posts). However, parallel comparative research studies conducted in different countries to identify similarities and differences in online discourse are still scarce. Online discourse is conducted under the influence of many different factors, such as background, culture, politics, etc. During these times of uncertainty and crisis, people have turned to social media platforms as communication tools and primary information sources. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a global health crisis that has affected economies and societies worldwide.
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