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This study aims to explore the dissemination and evolutionary path of online public opinion from a crisis management perspective. By clarifying the influencing factors and dynamic mechanisms of online public opinion dissemination, this study provides insights into attenuating the negative impact of online public opinion and creating a favorable ecological space for online public opinion.

This research employs bibliometric analysis and CiteSpace software to analyze 302 Chinese articles published from 2006 to 2023 in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database and 276 English articles published from 1994 to 2023 in the Web of Science core set database. Through literature keyword clustering, co-citation analysis and burst terms analysis, this paper summarizes the core scientific research institutions, scholars, hot topics and evolutionary paths of online public opinion crisis management research from both Chinese and international academic communities.

The results show that the study of online public opinion crisis management in China and internationally is centered on the life cycle theory, which integrates knowledge from information, computer and system sciences. Although there are differences in political interaction and stage evolution, the overall evolutionary path is similar, and it develops dynamically in the “benign conflict” between the expansion of the research perspective and the gradual refinement of research granularity.

This study summarizes the research results of online public opinion crisis management from China and the international academic community and identifies current research hotspots and theoretical evolution paths. Future research can focus on deepening the basic theories of public opinion crisis management under the influence of frontier technologies, exploring the subjectivity and emotionality of web users using fine algorithms and promoting the international development of network public opinion crisis management theory through transnational comparison and international cooperation.

This study argues that online user comments on social media platforms provide feedback and evaluation functions. These functions can provide services for the relevant departments of organizations or institutions to formulate corresponding public opinion response strategies.

This study considers Chinese universities’ public opinion events on the Weibo platform as the research object. It collects online comments on Chinese universities’ network public opinion governance strategy texts on Weibo, constructs the sentiment index based on sentiment analysis and evaluates the effectiveness of the network public opinion governance strategy adopted by university officials.

This study found the following: First, a complete information release process can effectively improve the effect of public opinion governance strategies. Second, the effect of network public opinion governance strategies was significantly influenced by the type of public opinion event. Finally, the effect of public opinion governance strategies is closely related to the severity of punishment for the subjects involved.

The theoretical contribution of this study lies in the application of image repair theory and strategies in the field of network public opinion governance, which further broadens the scope of the application of image repair theory and strategies.

This study expands online user comment research to network public opinion governance and provides a quantitative method for evaluating the effect of governance strategies.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-05-2022-0269

Under the background of coexistence of information overload and information fragmentation, it is of great significance to identify influencing factors and reveal the evolution logic of public opinion for public opinion governance.

Taking 24 hot social events as research cases, firstly, the evolution process of public opinion was divided into initial stage and response stage. Secondly, eight antecedent variables were extracted for qualitative comparative analysis of fuzzy sets. Finally, the configuration path of public opinion evolution results was summarized.

The research showed that compared with the initial stage, the influencing factors in the reaction stage played a key role in the continuous evolution of public opinion. The influencing factors in the initial stage and response stage played an indispensable role in promoting the evolution of public opinion to calm down.

This research can provide reference for regulators to timely grasp the initiative, discourse power and leadership of public opinion development.

Research on the two-stage configuration path of public opinion evolution is helpful to clarify the key factors affecting the evolution trend of online public opinion of hot events.

This research aims to examine the ways and the extent to which social media platforms undermine the spiral of silence by facilitating the expression of diverse voices and opinions.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of closed groups focused on non-consensus topics.

Facebook closed group members perceive the media as isolating and portraying their issues negatively. However, these groups offer support, inclusion and non-judgmental opinion-sharing space. Consequently, members feel more comfortable discussing and sharing the topic outside the group, indicating a slight trend of challenging and undermining the spiral of silence through social networks.

The study faces challenges in comparing diverse groups due to unique circumstances, complex needs and societal attitudes. Each group stands alone, potentially yielding slightly different findings.

Social media challenges and undermines the spiral of silence, as these opinions are shared with the wider society and can even find their way back to mainstream media outlets. Thus, social media platforms play a significant role in disrupting the spiral of silence and facilitating the expression of diverse opinions that may have been previously suppressed.

This research emphasizes the critical role of social media in shaping public opinion and its interaction with the broader media landscape, illustrating a circular process where social media disrupts the spiral of silence by facilitating the expression of previously suppressed diverse opinions, which can then potentially influence mainstream media.

This study adds value by exploring how social media platforms can challenge and undermine the spiral of silence, enabling the expression of diverse, marginalized and underrepresented opinions in society. It highlights the role of social media in shaping public opinion and discourse, challenging the dominance of traditional media. Its originality emanates from its revelations concerning the legitimization of conversational topics, which may consequently affect media agendas.

With the rapid development of short videos in China, the public has become accustomed to using short videos to express their opinions. This paper aims to solve problems such as how to represent the features of different modalities and achieve effective cross-modal feature fusion when analyzing the multi-modal sentiment of Chinese short videos (CSVs).

This paper aims to propose a sentiment analysis model MSCNN-CPL-CAFF using multi-scale convolutional neural network and cross attention fusion mechanism to analyze the CSVs. The audio-visual and textual data of CSVs themed on “COVID-19, catering industry” are collected from CSV platform Douyin first, and then a comparative analysis is conducted with advanced baseline models.

The sample number of the weak negative and neutral sentiment is the largest, and the sample number of the positive and weak positive sentiment is relatively small, accounting for only about 11% of the total samples. The MSCNN-CPL-CAFF model has achieved the Acc-2, Acc-3 and F1 score of 85.01%, 74.16 and 84.84%, respectively, which outperforms the highest value of baseline methods in accuracy and achieves competitive computation speed.

This research offers some implications regarding the impact of COVID-19 on catering industry in China by focusing on multi-modal sentiment of CSVs. The methodology can be utilized to analyze the opinions of the general public on social media platform and to categorize them accordingly.

This paper presents a novel deep-learning multimodal sentiment analysis model, which provides a new perspective for public opinion research on the short video platform.

People's socializing behavior in social networking services (SNS) presents dramatically different features, forming differentiated online social interaction patterns (DOSIP) in SNS. This study aims to explore the relationships between users' multidimensional psychological needs and multiple social interaction patterns in SNS.

Based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs and use and gratifications (U&G) theory, the authors develop the research model to examine the effects of psychological needs on DOSIP. A survey is used to collect the data of SNS users' social interaction. The authors adopt structural equation modeling–neural network (SEM-NN) integrated method to examine the research model.

Need to belong, need for self-esteem, need for social contact, need for emotional expression, need for cognition, and need for external-esteem have significant influences on both active and passive social interactions respectively.

Based on the categorization of DOSIP into six types in terms of the level of activity and disclosure of social interaction, the authors construct an integrated research model of multidimensional psychological needs to multiple social interaction patterns, and validate the antecedents of DOSIP from the perspective of psychological needs.

This paper refines the Digital Media–Arena (DMA) framework to address the diversity of stakeholders contributing to the production, (re)appropriation and (re)distribution of organisational messages in digital environments. It also presents a case analysis for the purpose of demonstrating the applicability of the revised conceptual framework to a critical situation.

Grounded in key public relations, corporate communication and strategic communication research, this study first extends the DMA framework by introducing six new forms of media-arenas. Next, the study takes a public sector perspective to analyse the revised framework against a critical situation involving the Finnish prime minister in summer 2022.

The application of the revised DMA framework to analyse the critical situation shows the importance of mapping and understanding diverse discourses across multi-arenas and their communication role in a rapidly unfolding scandal surrounding the prime minister of Finland. Findings also reveal the diversity of stakeholder voices forming their own versions of organisational messages and sometimes converging organisational messages within and across DMAs.

The DMA framework can offer practical suggestions to guide communicators to make strategic choices in what, where, how and with whom they can communicate.

The revised DMA framework contributes expanding the field's knowledge of the strategic communicative use of the digital environment in typically highly volatile and multi-vocal situations by offering instrumental understanding of the conflicting challenge between subjugating and liberating organisational messages across the digital spectrum.

This study aims to analyze government hotline text data and generating forecasts could enable the effective detection of public demands and help government departments explore, mitigate and resolve social problems.

In this study, social problems were determined and analyzed by using the time attributes of government hotline data. Social public events with periodicity were quantitatively analyzed via the Prophet model. The Prophet model is decided after running a comparison study with other widely applied time series models. The validation of modeling and forecast was conducted for social events such as travel and educational services, human resources and public health.

The results show that the Prophet algorithm could generate relatively the best performance. Besides, the four types of social events showed obvious trends with periodicities and holidays and have strong interpretable results.

The research could help government departments pay attention to time dependency and periodicity features of the hotline data and be aware of early warnings of social events following periodicity and holidays, enabling them to rationally allocate resources to handle upcoming social events and problems and better promoting the role of the big data structure of government hotline data sets in urban governance innovations.

This paper aims to systematically unpack the ideal of organizational transparency by tracing the concept's origins in the era of Enlightenment. Based on a genealogical reconstruction, the article explores different transparency understandings in key areas of online public relations (PR) and discusses the opportunities and challenges they present for the field.

This is a conceptual paper that unfolds a genealogical reconstruction to uncover different transparency ideals of modernity. These perspectives are then transferred to the field of online PR to discuss their ethical and practical implications in the context of digitalization.

Claims for transparency manifest in three distinct ideals, namely normative, instrumental and expressive transparency, which are also pursued in online PR. These ideals are related to associated concepts, like dialogue, control and authenticity, which serve as transparency proxies. Moreover, each transparency ideal inherits an ambivalence that presents unique opportunities and challenges for PR practitioners.

Instead of an unquestioned belief in the ideal of organizational transparency, the paper urges communication practitioners to critically reflect on the ambivalent nature of different transparency regimes in the context of digitalization and provides initial recommendations on how to manage digital transparency in online PR responsibly.

The paper contributes to the vivid debate surrounding organizational transparency in the context of digitalization by offering a novel and systematic analysis of the multifaced concept of transparency while opening new research avenues for further conceptual and empirical research.

The purpose of this study is to understand the public value of the government of Kuwait using blockchain technology to develop the capabilities of smart cities.

Research was conducted in Kuwait, where the increased use of blockchain technology has been evidenced in both the private and public sectors. A total of seven IT managers were interviewed to gauge their responses to blockchain and its use in Kuwait ministries.

Blockchain technology offers many benefits for the development of smart cities in Kuwait. This is a statement that received almost mutual agreement amongst all the IT managers interviewed. However, as regards wider acceptance, the majority mentioned that a framework is necessary to better articulate the public value of using blockchain in smart cities in Kuwait.

This paper develops research hypotheses and a framework for articulating the public value of blockchain technology for smart cities in Kuwait.