Resistance And Integration:Public Opinion And Official Opinion In The Plague Of COVID-19

At the beginning of 2020,a sudden outbreak of COVID-19 epidemic swept across China,which also put the complex space of public opinion to a greater test.In particular,the relationship between public opinions and official opinions presented a subtle,complex and fluctuating state.This paper tries to give a clear description of the changing forms of public and official opinions constructed by the mainstream media during the fight against COVID-19,and explores the underlying logic of public opinions from resistance to blending with official opinions.To explore the performance,reason and evolution path of the changing,this article analyzed the content of @People’s Daily’s 770 hot comments on February 1,2020.The paper also analyzed the content of 387 passages pushed by Hubei Daily We Chat public account during January 19,2020 to April 9,2020.Combined with in-depth interviews,further participatory observation was made on the expression of public and official opinions on the Internet.The study found that the resistance of public opinion in the early stage of the epidemic was mainly angry and joking,followed by critical and tragic resistance,and both the explicit and recessive resistance behaviors exist.This paper analyzes the reasons for the resistance of the public from three dimensions: the dislocation of official opinion’s production,the public’s rebellion and the game of communication power.This research found that the previous academic researches on public opinion and official opinion mostly focused on the aspect of opinion resistance,and the researches on the fusion of opinions,especially in public health emergencies,were few.This paper takes "Wuhan Unsealed" as an example to show the blending of public opinion and official opinion,and analyzes the factors that push the public from resistance to integration from three aspects: the internal generation and external motivation of the public itself,the benign guidance of official opinion and the science communication.This paper creatively extends the theory of the positive audience in the sense that the concept of the positive audience not only represents the positive behavior of the audience,but also includes the possibility of the positive tendency in psychology.This paper also points out that the study of the relationship between public opinion and official opinion should be placed in the specific political and cultural framework of China.Collectivism,the consciousness of obedience and the cultural concept of "family and country isomorphism" are also important factors that promote the integration of public opinion and official opinion.This paper holds the view that the relationship between public opinion and official opinion is not an absolute binary opposition,and the public’s resistance to the official opinion is not an absolute resistance either.In the process of the exchange of opinions,the public’s resistance contains compromise and integration,and also pregnant with the factors and trends of the integration with the official opinion.