| 14 Nov 2025
Tracing Emotional Evolution along Named Entity Topic Chains: A Mechanistic Study of Chinese Social Media in the 2025 Myanmar Earthquake
Abstract. This study examines how emotional responses to transboundary disasters are structured and propagated within digital discourse, using the 2025 Myanmar earthquake as a case. Drawing on a dataset of 139,473 Chinese Weibo posts collected from March 28 to April 25, we develop an emotion – entity coupling framework that integrates large language model-based emotion annotation with named entity recognition (NER) to construct a semantic-affective network. Rather than treating sentiment as a standalone attribute, this approach models emotion as a dynamic and relational process that flows through named entities, which serve as semantic anchors and emotional conduits. The analysis reveals distinct patterns in both temporal emotion dynamics and structural emotion transmission. While emotions such as fear and surprise dominated the discourse, positive sentiments – particularly those associated with humanitarian actors – formed localized zones of empathic resonance. The coupled emotion–entity network exposed asymmetric affective pathways, with certain entities acting as hubs of amplification, bridge nodes, or buffers in the transmission of emotional meaning. Subgraph analysis further highlighted how institutional memory, geographical proximity, and media narratives shaped the stability and flow of public sentiment. By reconceptualizing emotion as structurally embedded and semantically routed, this study offers both theoretical and methodological innovations in disaster risk communication. The proposed framework advances understanding of how empathy and public engagement are generated, distributed, and sustained in the digital age – particularly in response to disasters that cross national borders.
Thank you for allowing me to review this manuscript. The topic of the manuscript is interesting, and the contribution is clear. Yet, the clarity of the first half of the paper could be improved, as well as that of the results. My recommendations and comments would be as follows:
1. In line 45, you claim that " social media operates not only as an information infrastructure but also as an affective interface". Please clarify how this is possible and what this implies.
2. In line 50, you referred to "evolving topic structures" without clarifying what this means. Please do this to ensure clarity.
3. The paragraph on the 2025 Myanmar earthquake (lines 53-65) appears under-supported, as several of the claims are not referenced. Please address this.
4. In line 91, you do not clarify what "semantic chains" are. This may detract from the clarity of your work.
5. In line 99, "transnational solidarity, symbolic alignment, and cognitive resonance" should be individually briefly discussed to ensure the clarity of your contribution from the beginning of the paper.
6. The contribution of your work should also be highlighted further, following line 108, by explaining the relevance and motivations behind this growing research interest in this area.
7. The dynamics mentioned in line 153 could also be discussed more explicitly.
8. The key reasons for the importance of addressing the gap identified in line 163 should also be pointed out more clearly.
9. The graphs included in the results section could be described briefly for increased clarity and accessibility.
I hope this helps. All the very best.