A New Geo-Propagation Model of Event Evolution Chain Based on Public Opinion and Epidemic Coupling

The online public opinion is the sum of public views, attitudes and emotions spread on major public health emergencies through the Internet, which maps out the scope of influence and the disaster situation of public health events in real space. Based on the multi-source data of COVID-19 in the context of a global pandemic, this paper analyzes the propagation rules of disasters in the coupling of the spatial dimension of geographic reality and the dimension of network public opinion, and constructs a new gravity model-complex network-based geographic propagation model of the evolution chain of typical public health events. The strength of the model is that it quantifies the extent of the impact of the epidemic area on the surrounding area and the spread of the epidemic, constructing an interaction between the geographical reality dimension and online public opinion dimension. The results show that: The heterogeneity in the direction of social media discussions before and after the “closure” of Wuhan is evident, with the center of gravity clearly shifting across the Yangtze River and the cyclical changing in public sentiment; the network model based on the evolutionary chain has a significant community structure in geographic space, divided into seven regions with a modularity of 0.793; there are multiple key infection trigger nodes in the network, with a spatially polycentric infection distribution.