Research On The Opinion Leaders Of Political BBS

BBS as an important news and information dissemination channel in China has been a unneglect phenomenon, where the BBS opinion leaders play significant roles in formation and guidance of public opinion. The dissertation explores the opinion leadership of the Sino-Japan BBS of Strong Nation Forum as the study case, by the means of data-mining, online survey and interview, which enriches the outcomes in the field both theoretically and practically.The research abides the logic from virtual to reality. First construct the Opinion Leadership Filtering Model to filter out the BBS opinion leaders, then outline the characteristic of BBS opinion leaders from the angel of the stability of opinion leadership, the social network, the posting frame and their demographics to reveal what kind of person they are in real life.The research results go as following:a. The Model posted in the dissertation to categorize different types of BBS participants can provide valid result on select of opinion leaders and its followers. Moreover, compared with the widely-used opinion leadership measuring method-the self report, the filtering result is more objective.b. The BBS opinion leadership is unstable. According to the switch among different roles, the BBS opinion leadership can be categorized as four types: very stable opinion leadership, stable opinion leadership, unstable opinion leadership and the transient opinion leadership, which the last two possesses the largest portion. The attainment of BBS opinion leadership lies in the quantity and quality of posting, in which the quantity is the prerequisite and quality is the critical factor. The high-quality posting, i.e. with high sense of social responsibility, clear in expression and logic, rich in materials and data can win the clicking and replies of post-readers and establish the stable statue of opinion leadership in a long run.c. Through the analysis of the social network of Sino-Japan BBS participants, the opinion leaders do not locate in the center of the discussion network. In contrast, those often criticized IDs are stars of the discussion network. Further analysis reveals that the opinion leaders have the habit to challenge some participants with different political interests and mixed subgroups commonly exist in Sino-Japan BBS; thus debates are common phenomenon among participants with conflicting political interests.d. The content analysis of the frames of different types of BBS participants comes to the conclusion that there are two conflicting frames in sino-Japan BBS, the Opinion Leadership Frame and the Target Frame.The former frame empasis on the reflection of past history while the latter on friendship and future development. The case study of the 69th Anniversery of Anti-Japanses Arregrssion in Sino-Japan BBS reveals that the paintful collective memory of Nanjing Massaca during World War II is the source the Opinion Leadership Frame.e. Finally the online survey and interview reveals that the Sino Japan opinion leaders are not as powerful as in real life. In reality they are common people with college education, middle and lower income, and with strong passion of patriotism and some dissatisfaction with present life, middle-aged male, some of whom have to struggle for life. Because the BBS environment inclines to some changes of human being's communicative behavior, online flames and aggression happen occasionally due to the oniminity of BBS.In brief, the BBS opinion leadership in China is a field requiring more objective, scientific and positivistic research outcomes. The contribution of this dissertation is the construction of BBS Opinion Leadership Filtering Model based on the data-mining method, which provides a new perspective on this topic both in theory and methodology.