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

Jiakun Wang (College of Economics and Management, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, China)
Yun Li (College of Economics and Management, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, China) (College of Foreign Languages, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, China)

Aslib Journal of Information Management

ISSN: 2050-3806

Article publication date: 20 July 2022

Issue publication date: 23 March 2023

374

Abstract

Purpose

Under 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/approach

Thinking 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.

Findings

The 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 implications

The 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/value

Our 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.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51574157; 51474138; 71902105); Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (ZR2021QG035); Shandong Province Social Science Planning Research Project (20CGLJ21). The authors would like to send their sincere appreciation to the anonymous referees for their valuable comments and suggestions.

Citation

Wang, J. and Li, Y. (2023), "Research on the propagation and governance of public opinion information under the joint action of internal and external factors", Aslib Journal of Information Management, Vol. 75 No. 2, pp. 193-214. https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-02-2022-0065

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited

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