Weibo Users’ Emotion and Sentiment Orientation in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) During the COVID-19 Pandemic

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to explore Chinese people’s attitudes to the official application of TCM in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) treatment. METHODS: We collected data referring to TCM on Weibo from 0:00 on January 24, 2020, to 23:59:59 on March 31, 2020 (Beijing time). In addition, this study used DLUT-Emotion ontology to analyze the sentiment orientation and emotions of selected data and then conducted a text analysis. RESULTS: According to DLUT-Emotion ontology, we examined 3 sentiment orientations of 215,565 valid Weibo posts. Among them, 25,025 posts were judged as positive emotions, accounting for approximately 12%; 22,362 were regarded as negative emotions, accounting for approximately 10%; and 168,178 were judged as neutral emotions, accounting for approximately 78%. Results indicate that the words judged as “Good” have the highest frequency, and words marked as “Happy” have increased over time. The word frequency of “Fear” and “Sadness” showed a significant downward trend. CONCLUSION: Weibo users have a relatively positive attitude to the TCM in the COVID-19 treatment in general. Results of text analysis show that data with negative emotions is essentially an expression of public opinions to supporting TCM or not. Texts of “Fear” and “Sadness” do not reflect users’ negative attitudes to TCM.