Stigma towards Wuhan people during the COVID-19 epidemic: An exploratory study based on social media

Background: Stigma associated with infectious diseases is common and causes various negative effects on stigmatized people. With Wuhan as the center of the COVID-19 outbreak in China, its people have become an object of stigmatization. To provide necessary information for stigma mitigation, this study aims to identify the stigmatizing attitudes towards Wuhan people and trace their changes as the COVID-19 progressed in China by analyzing related posts on social media.Methods: We collected a total of 19,780 Weibo posts containing the keyword ‘Wuhan people’ and performed a content analysis to identify stigmatizing attitudes in the posts. Then we divided our observation time into three periods and performed Repeated Measures ANOVA to compare the differences in attitudes in three periods. Results: Results show that stigma was mild with 2.46% of related posts being stigmatizing. The percentages of stigmatizing posts differed significantly in 3 periods (F (2,66) = 5.60, p <.01, η2= 0.15). The percentages of ‘Infectious’ posts (F (2,66) = 3.69, p <.05, η2 = 0.10) and ‘Stupid’ posts (F (2,66) = 3.65, p <.05, η2 = 0.10) are significantly different in 3 periods. The percentages of ‘Irresponsible’ posts is not significant different in 3 periods (F (2,66) = 0.63, p =.53, η2 = 0.02). After government interventions, stigma didn’t reduce significantly, and stigma with ‘Infectious’ attitude even increased. It was until the government interventions took effect that stigma significantly reduced. Conclusions: This study found that stigma towards Wuhan people included diverse attitudes and changed at different periods. After government interventions but before they took effect, stigma with ‘Infectious’ attitude increased. After government interventions took effect, general stigma, and stigma with ‘Infectious’ and ‘Stupid’ attitudes decreased. This study constitutes an important endeavor to understand the stigma towards Wuhan people in China during the COVID-19 epidemic. Implications for stigma reduction and improvement of the public’s perception in different periods of epidemic control are discussed.