Social Relations Under the Covid-19 Epidemic: Government Policies, Media Statements and Public Moods

ABSTRACT

In the face of public emergencies, how to better manage public opinion and maintain social stability is an important research content. Based on the background of the new epidemic in 2020, this paper explores how social emotions are transmitted among the government, the media and the public under public emergencies. Through natural language processing technology, this paper analyzes the relevant policies and media opinions of China, Britain and the United States under the new epidemic situation, and uses mf-dcca model to test the internal cross correlation. The results of the experiment unexpectedly found that a country’s government policy and the country’s media have a high degree of consistency in emotional orientation, and when the country’s social mood has abnormal fluctuations, the media will make adverse emotional statements, thus hedging the impact of some extreme policies on the society. From the perspective of emotion, this study provides a further theoretical basis for the relationship between the government and the public, proposes another control role of the media in emergencies, and discusses the relevant methods of media hedging government policies in the impact of social emotions. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.