Quantifying public opinion evolution and information behavior dynamics: a framework coupling event knowledge graphs with centroid-aligned topic modeling

Public health emergency monitoring on social media is crucial for proactive risk mitigation. However, this process remains constrained by short-text semantic noise and the fragmented integration of discourse structures and behavioral heterogeneity. To bridge this gap, this paper introduces a dual-level framework integrating Event Knowledge Graphs (EKG) and user behavior profiling, built on a Centroid-Alignment Factor (C-AF) embedding-enhanced BERTopic model. Applied to 22,744 Weibo posts related to the Chikungunya fever outbreak, the C-AF model optimizes Topic Diversity (TD) from 0.5725 to 0.6480, enabling the construction of a high-precision EKG that reveals core discourse evolutionary pathways. For user behavior segmentation, the framework achieves a peak Silhouette Coefficient of 0.909 (outperforming the 0.670 baseline by 35.7%), further validated by an external semantic indicator (TC improving from 0.550 to 0.783). This dual-validation successfully identifies five distinct user profiles: Early Cognitive, Knowledge Dissemination, Risk-Attention, Prevention-Focused, and Preventive Alert types. This framework offers a scalable, data-driven tool for precise public health crisis monitoring and targeted digital governance intervention.

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Publication Details

Journal
EPJ Data Science
Published
2026-10-09
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-026-00709-3
Primary Topic
Public Relations and Crisis Communication
Type
article
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article

Quantifying public opinion evolution and information behavior dynamics: a framework coupling event knowledge graphs with centroid-aligned topic modeling

Xiaojing Zhang, Xianghui Kong, Juan Wang
EPJ Data Science
Public Relations and Crisis Communication
article

Quantifying public opinion evolution and information behavior dynamics: a framework coupling event knowledge graphs with centroid-aligned topic modeling

Xiaojing Zhang, Xianghui Kong, Juan Wang
article en

Abstract

Public health emergency monitoring on social media is crucial for proactive risk mitigation. However, this process remains constrained by short-text semantic noise and the fragmented integration of discourse structures and behavioral heterogeneity. To bridge this gap, this paper introduces a dual-level framework integrating Event Knowledge Graphs (EKG) and user behavior profiling, built on a Centroid-Alignment Factor (C-AF) embedding-enhanced BERTopic model. Applied to 22,744 Weibo posts related to the Chikungunya fever outbreak, the C-AF model optimizes Topic Diversity (TD) from 0.5725 to 0.6480, enabling the construction of a high-precision EKG that reveals core discourse evolutionary pathways. For user behavior segmentation, the framework achieves a peak Silhouette Coefficient of 0.909 (outperforming the 0.670 baseline by 35.7%), further validated by an external semantic indicator (TC improving from 0.550 to 0.783). This dual-validation successfully identifies five distinct user profiles: Early Cognitive, Knowledge Dissemination, Risk-Attention, Prevention-Focused, and Preventive Alert types. This framework offers a scalable, data-driven tool for precise public health crisis monitoring and targeted digital governance intervention.

EPJ Data Science
Qingdao University (CN), Shandong Institute of Business and Technology (CN)
Openalex Percentile: Top 5%
Public Relations and Crisis Communication
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Quantifying public opinion evolution and information behavior dynamics: a framework coupling event knowledge graphs with centroid-aligned topic modeling — Xiaojing Zhang, Xianghui Kong, et al. · EPJ Data Science (2026) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS