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A Study on the Perception Change of Bats after COVID-19 by Social Media Data Analysis

  • Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
  • Abbr : J EIA
  • 2022, 31(5), pp.310-320
  • Publisher : Korean Society Of Environmental Impact Assessment
  • Research Area : Engineering > Environmental Engineering
  • Received : August 26, 2022
  • Accepted : October 5, 2022
  • Published : November 2, 2022

Lee Jukyung 1 Byeori Kim 2 Sun-Sook Kim 3

1서울대학교
2국립생태원 생태응용연구실 생태신기술팀
3국립생태원

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to identify the change in the public perception of “bats” after the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) infection. Text mining and network analysis were conducted for blog posts, the largest social network in Korea. We collected 9,241 Naver blog posts from 2019 to 2020 just before the outbreak of COVID-19 in Korea. The data were analyzed with Python and NetMiner 4.3.2, and the public’s perception of bats was examined through the relationship of keywords by period. Findings indicated that the frequency of bat keywords in 2020 increased more than 25 times compared to 2019, and the centrality value increased more than three times. The perception of bats changed before and after the outbreak of the pandemic. Prior to COVID-19, bats were highly recognized as a species of wildlife while in the first half of 2020, they were strongly considered as a threat to human society in relation to infectious diseases and health. In the second half of 2020, it was confirmed that the area of interest in bats expanded as the proportion of ecological and cultural types ofresearch increased. This study seeks to contribute to the expansion and direction of future research in bats by understanding the public’s interest in the potential impact of the species as disease hosts post the COVID-19 pandemic.

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