Background: In December 2019, a few coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases were first reported in Wuhan, Hubei, China. Soon after, increasing numbers of cases were detected in other parts of China, eventually leading to a disease outbreak in China. As this dreadful disease spreads rapidly, the mass media has been active in community education on COVID-19 by delivering health information about this novel coronavirus, such as its pathogenesis, spread, prevention, and containment. Objective: The aim of this study was to collect media reports on COVID-19 and investigate the patterns of media-directed health communications as well as the role of the media in this ongoing COVID-19 crisis in China. Methods: We adopted the WiseSearch database to extract related news articles about the coronavirus from major press media between January 1, 2020, and February 20, 2020. We then sorted and analyzed the data using Python software and Python package Jieba. We sought a suitable topic number with evidence of the coherence number. We operated latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling with a suitable topic number and generated corresponding keywords and topic names. We then divided these topics into different themes by plotting them into a 2D plane via multidimensional scaling. Results: After removing duplications and irrelevant reports, our search identified 7791 relevant news reports. We listed the number of articles published per day. According to the coherence value, we chose 20 as the number of topics and generated the topics’ themes and keywords. These topics were categorized into nine main primary themes based on the topic visualization figure. The top three most popular themes were prevention and control procedures, medical treatment and research, and global or local social and economic influences, accounting for 32.57% (n=2538), 16.08% (n=1258), and 11.79% (n=919) of the collected reports, respectively. Conclusions: Topic modeling of news articles can produce useful information about the significance of mass media for early health communication. Comparing the number of articles for each day and the outbreak development, we noted that mass media news reports in China lagged behind the development of COVID-19. The major themes accounted for around half the content and tended to focus on the larger society rather than on individuals. The COVID-19 crisis has become a worldwide issue, and society has become concerned about donations and support as well as mental health among others. We recommend that future work addresses the mass media’s actual impact on readers during the COVID-19 crisis through sentiment analysis of news data.

This study content analyzed 3,300 user comments from the 11 most-viewed YouTube videos about climate activist Greta Thunberg. The analysis reveals that about 4 in 10 comments contained some form of incivility. Moreover, 40% of the uncivil comments reflected ageism, slightly more than one third sexism, and just less than one quarter ableism. The analysis suggests that uncivil comments about Thunberg on YouTube were far from deliberative in nature, ignored her positions on climate change altogether, and focused on her youth, gender, and Asperger’s syndrome.

Background: The influence of meteorological factors on the transmission and spread of COVID-19 is of interest and has not been investigated.Objective: This study aimed to investigate the associations between meteorological factors and the daily number of new cases of COVID-19 in 9 Asian cities.Methods: Pearson correlation and generalized additive modeling (GAM) were performed to assess the relationships between daily new COVID-19 cases and meteorological factors (daily average temperature and relative humidity) with the most updated data currently available.Results: The Pearson correlation showed that daily new confirmed cases of COVID-19 were more correlated with the average temperature than with relative humidity. Daily new confirmed cases were negatively correlated with the average temperature in Beijing (r=–0.565, P<.001), Shanghai (r=–0.47, P<.001), and Guangzhou (r=–0.53, P<.001). In Japan, however, a positive correlation was observed (r=0.416, P<.001). In most of the cities (Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, and Kuala Lumpur), GAM analysis showed the number of daily new confirmed cases to be positively associated with both average temperature and relative humidity, especially using lagged 3D modeling where the positive influence of temperature on daily new confirmed cases was discerned in 5 cities (exceptions: Beijing, Wuhan, Korea, and Malaysia). Moreover, the sensitivity analysis showed, by incorporating the city grade and public health measures into the model, that higher temperatures can increase daily new case numbers (beta=0.073, Z=11.594, P<.001) in the lagged 3-day model.Conclusions: The findings suggest that increased temperature yield increases in daily new cases of COVID-19. Hence, large-scale public health measures and expanded regional research are still required until a vaccine becomes widely available and herd immunity is established.

Background: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, health information related to COVID-19 has spread across news media worldwide. Google is among the most used internet search engines, and the Google Trends tool can reflect how the public seeks COVID-19–related health information during the pandemic. Objective: The aim of this study was to understand health communication through Google Trends and news coverage and to explore their relationship with prevention and control of COVID-19 at the early epidemic stage. Methods: To achieve the study objectives, we analyzed the public’s information-seeking behaviors on Google and news media coverage on COVID-19. We collected data on COVID-19 news coverage and Google search queries from eight countries (ie, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Singapore, Ireland, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand) between January 1 and April 29, 2020. We depicted the characteristics of the COVID-19 news coverage trends over time, as well as the search query trends for the topics of COVID-19–related “diseases,” “treatments and medical resources,” “symptoms and signs,” and “public measures.” The search query trends provided the relative search volume (RSV) as an indicator to represent the popularity of a specific search term in a specific geographic area over time. Also, time-lag correlation analysis was used to further explore the relationship between search terms trends and the number of new daily cases, as well as the relationship between search terms trends and news coverage. Results: Across all search trends in eight countries, almost all search peaks appeared between March and April 2020, and declined in April 2020. Regarding COVID-19–related “diseases,” in most countries, the RSV of the term “coronavirus” increased earlier than that of “covid-19”; however, around April 2020, the search volume of the term “covid-19” surpassed that of “coronavirus.” Regarding the topic “treatments and medical resources,” the most and least searched terms were “mask” and “ventilator,” respectively. Regarding the topic “symptoms and signs,” “fever” and “cough” were the most searched terms. The RSV for the term “lockdown” was significantly higher than that for “social distancing” under the topic “public health measures.” In addition, when combining search trends with news coverage, there were three main patterns: (1) the pattern for Singapore, (2) the pattern for the United States, and (3) the pattern for the other countries. In the time-lag correlation analysis between the RSV for the topic “treatments and medical resources” and the number of new daily cases, the RSV for all countries except Singapore was positively correlated with new daily cases, with a maximum correlation of 0.8 for the United States. In addition, in the time-lag correlation analysis between the overall RSV for the topic “diseases” and the number of daily news items, the overall RSV was positively correlated with the number of daily news items, the maximum correlation coefficient was more than 0.8, and the search behavior occurred 0 to 17 days earlier than the news coverage. Conclusions: Our findings revealed public interest in masks, disease control, and public measures, and revealed the potential value of Google Trends in the face of the emergence of new infectious diseases. Also, Google Trends combined with news media can achieve more efficient health communication. Therefore, both news media and Google Trends can contribute to the early prevention and control of epidemics.

Background: Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) have been a newsworthy topic in China. E-cigarettes are receiving greater consumer attention due to the rise of the Chinese e-cigarettes industry. In the past decade, e-cigarettes have been widely debated across the media, particularly their identity and their health effects. Objective: this study aims to (1) find the key topics in e-cigarette news and (2) provide suggestions for future media strategies to improve health communication. Method: We collected Chinese e-cigarettes news from 1 November 2015 to 31 October 2020, in the Huike (WiseSearch) database, using “e-cigarettes” (Chinese: “电子烟”) as the keyword. We used the Jieba package in python to perform the data cleaning process and the Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling method to generate major themes of the health communication through news content. Main finding: through an analysis of 1584 news articles on e-cigarettes, this paper finds 26 topics covered with 4 themes as regulations and control (n = 475, 30%), minor protection (n = 436, 27.5%), industry activities (n = 404, 25.5%), and health effects (n = 269, 17%). The peak and decline of the number of news articles are affected by time and related regulations. Conclusion: the main themes of Chinese news content on e-cigarettes are regulations and control, and minor protection. Newspapers should shoulder the responsibilities and play an important role in health communication with balanced coverage.

Journal of Medical Internet Research - International Scientific Journal for Medical Research, Information and Communication on the Internet #Preprint #PeerReviewMe: Warning: This is a unreviewed preprint. Readers are warned that the document has not been peer-reviewed by expert/patient reviewers or an academic editor, may contain misleading claims, and is likely to undergo changes before final publication, if accepted, or may have been rejected/withdrawn. Readers with interest and expertise are encouraged to sign up as peer-reviewer, if the paper is within an open peer-review period. Please cite this preprint only for review purposes or for grant applications and CVs (if you are the author). Background: Third-hand smoke (THS) has been a growing topic for decades in China. Third-hand smoke consists of residual tobacco smoke pollutants that remain on surfaces and in dust and these pollutants are re-emitted into the gas phase or react with oxidants and other compounds in the environment to yield secondary pollutants. Objective: Collecting media reports from major media outlets and analyzing this subject using topic modeling can facilitate a better understanding of the role that the media plays in communicating this health concept. Methods: The data were retrieved from the Huike and Factiva news databases. A preliminary investigation of the Factiva database, focusing on articles dated between January 1, 2013 and December 31, 2017 and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) yielded the top 10 topics about the THS. The use of the modified tool LDAvis enables an overall view of the topic model that visualizes different topics as circles; multidimensional scaling is used to represent the inter-topic distances on a two-dimensional plane. Results: Seven hundred and forty-five articles were found dated between January 1, 2013 and December 31, 2017. The United States ranked 1st in terms of publications (152 articles on THS from 2013 -2017). We found 279 news reports about THS from the Chinese media over the same period and 363 news reports from the United States. Given our analysis of the percentage of news related to THS in China, topic 1, “cancer,” was the most popular among the topics. This topic was noted in 31.9% of all news stories. Topic 2, “control of quitting smoking,” was related to roughly 15% news on THS. Conclusions: Our study showed that (1) related diseases, (2) air and particulate matter (PM2.5), and (3) control and restrictions are the major concerns of the Chinese media reporting on THS.