Research on the propagation and governance of public opinion information under the joint action of internal and external factors

Abstract

PurposeUnder the new media environment, while enjoying the convenience brought by the propagation of public opinion information (referred to as public opinion), learning the evolution process of public opinion and strengthening the governance of the spreading of public opinion are of great significance to promoting economic development and maintaining social stability as well as effectively resisting the negative impact of its propagation.Design/methodology/approachThinking about the results of empirical research and bibliometric analysis, this paper focused on introducing key factors such as information content, social strengthening effects, etc., from both internal and external levels, dynamically designed public opinion spreading rules and netizens' state transition probability. Subsequently, simulation experiments were conducted to discuss the spreading law of public opinion in two types of online social networks and to identify the key factors which influencing its evolution process. Based on the experimental results, the governance strategies for the propagation of negative public opinion were proposed finally.FindingsThe results show that compared with other factors, the propagation of public opinion depends more on the attributes of the information content itself. For the propagation of negative public opinion, on the one hand, the regulators should adopt flexible guidance strategy to establish a public opinion supervision mechanism and autonomous system with universal participation. On the other hand, they still need to adopt rigid governance strategy, focusing on the governance timing and netizens with higher network status to forestall the wide-diffusion of public opinion.Practical implicationsThe research conclusions put forward the enlightenment for the governance of public opinion in management practice, and also provided decision-making reference for the regulators to reasonably respond to the propagation of public opinion.Originality/valueOur research proposed a research framework for the discussion of public opinion propagation process and had important practical guiding significance for the governance of public opinion propagation.

Research on the evolution of cross-platform online public opinion for public health emergencies considering stakeholders

“…networks and conducted simulation analysis on the model using MATLAB [12]. Zhang et al proposed a method of public opinion sentiment analysis based on word frequency analysis and the LDA model.…”

“…The aim was to explore the dissemination patterns of public opinion in cross-platform social networks. Additionally, they constructed a public opinion dissemination model based on cross-platform social networks and conducted simulation analysis on the model using MATLAB [ 12 ]. Zhang et al proposed a method of public opinion sentiment analysis based on word frequency analysis and the LDA model.…”

Modeling and simulation on the spreading dynamics of public opinion information in temporal group networks

“…With the development of intelligent technology, the types of online social platforms have increased rapidly, but the strength of relationship among netizens on different groups shows obvious differences. Combined with the statistical data of actual social platforms and previous research conclusions (Wang & Li, 2023 19 ), this paper divided online social platforms into open and closed OSN, and used BA scale-free, NW small-world and ER random network models respectively to simulate the degree distribution of netizens in each groups. Based on the adjacency matrix d k ij (k = 1, 2 .…”

A study on the propagation of online public opinion by internet water army

“…, and by disguising themselves as ordinary netizens or consumers, they influence normal users by posting, recovering and spreading blog posts (Jiaze (2021); Liu and Xia (2021); SHEN et al (2017); Shin et al (2011); Chen et al (2016); Geng et al (2023); Wu et al (2023)). Taking advantage of the fact that netizens do not know the facts, they cause adverse effects by guiding the direction of online public opinion and disrupting the order of the network (Guo et al (2023); Xu et al (2013); Jain et al (2023); Wang and Li (2023)). With the emergence of Internet water armies, the concocted other-generated public opinion has overshadowed the naturally formed social opinion, which not only harms the healthy expression of public opinion on the Internet, but also causes the distortion of the data of the Internet public opinion monitoring and statistics, which is misleading to the academic research institutes and the government, as well as puts some social contradictions at the risk of being intensified or amplified.…”