Discovering and early predicting popularity evolution patterns of social media emergency information

Purpose When emergencies occur, the attention of the public towards emergency information on social media in a specific time period forms the emergency information popularity evolution patterns. The purpose of this study is to discover the popularity evolution patterns of social media emergency information and make early predictions. Design/methodology/approach We collected the data related to the COVID-19 epidemic on the Sina Weibo platform and applied the K-Shape clustering algorithm to identify five distinct patterns of emergency information popularity evolution patterns. These patterns include strong twin peaks, weak twin peaks, short-lived single peak, slow-to-warm-up single peak and slow-to-decay single peak. Oriented toward early monitoring and warning, we developed a comprehensive characteristic system that incorporates publisher features, information features and early features. In the early features, data measurements are taken within a 1-h time window after the release of emergency information. Considering real-time response and analysis speed, we employed classical machine learning methods to predict the relevant patterns. Multiple classification models were trained and evaluated for this purpose. Findings The combined prediction results of the best prediction model and random forest (RF) demonstrate impressive performance, with precision, recall and F1-score reaching 88%. Moreover, the F1 value for each pattern prediction surpasses 87%. The results of the feature importance analysis show that the early features contribute the most to the pattern prediction, followed by the information features and publisher features. Among them, the release time in the information features exhibits the most substantial contribution to the prediction outcome. Originality/value This study reveals the phenomena and special patterns of growth and decline, appearance and disappearance of social media emergency information popularity from the time dimension and identifies the patterns of social media emergency information popularity evolution. Meanwhile, early prediction of related patterns is made to explore the role factors behind them. These findings contribute to the formulation of social media emergency information release strategies, online public opinion guidance and risk monitoring.