ABSTRACT
After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, social media platforms offer an essential channel for the public to obtain and discuss the latest development of the epidemic situation and vaccine research. On the Chinese Sina Microblog, which is one of the most popular social platforms in China, two unique interaction mechanisms promote the change of the intensity and breadth of online information propagation, namely 'commenting' and 'forwarding'. Based on that, we propose a Susceptible-Commenting-Forwarding-Immune (SCFI) dynamic model and use the actual public opinion event on the Chinese Sina Microblog to adopt a data-model dual-drive research approach. We focus on the differences between the influence of 'commenting community' and 'forwarding community' on the promotion of information propagation, which is conducive to grasping the law of public opinion propagation. Our experimental results show that the multiple interactive mechanisms can particularly affect public opinion propagation. Our conclusions can contribute to designing effective communication strategies for governments and related agencies to guide public opinion in response to public health emergencies. © 2022 IEEE.