From empathy to action: exploring emotional mechanisms of online public opinion in a public health crisis.

INTRODUCTION: Drawing on digital empathy theory, this study explores how empathic expressions evolve and manifest as action-oriented behaviors in online public discourse during a public health crisis. Specifically, it focuses on a doctor's suicide incident discussed on the Weibo platform, examining how various empathy types influence public opinion and engagement. By investigating the emotional and behavioral responses within the digital realm, the study contributes to understanding the complex dynamics of empathy and its impact on collective emotion and decision-making during health-related crises.

METHODS: Data were collected from Weibo posts related to the doctor's suicide incident, and analyzed using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling and sentiment analysis.

RESULTS: The study revealed four primary areas of focus in the posts: medical decision-making disputes, cyberbullying and platform responsibility, media reproduction, and official reports and judicial investigations. Additionally, the study identified four distinct types of empathy expressed in the comments: professional empathy, institutional empathy, cultural empathy, and action-oriented empathy. The study also revealed significant differences in emotional valence across the four empathy types, and found that female users exhibited a higher level of empathic engagement compared to male users.

DISCUSSION: These findings suggest that digital empathy in public health crises operates as a complex, multi-layered emotional-behavioral mechanism. Different empathy types not only influence the emotional tone of online discussions but also affect the level of engagement and the type of actions that users take. This study highlights the critical role of empathy in shaping online behaviors during health-related crises and provides valuable insights into how platforms can manage emotional engagement to encourage constructive participation.