From Topic To Issue

The agenda-setting process and the formation of public opinion are very different from that in the traditional view. There are thousands of topics in the Internet everyday, but only few of them can become public issues and form public opinion. How can these topics grow up to public issues and then public opinions, that is the problem to be solved in this article.Supported by agenda-setting theory and by using the empirical research methods to do the research, we chose ifeng forum as the object, and selected September25to October25in2011as the period of time.First of all collect all the posts at the time in the forum, then select668topics among the total by using the random number table. In this way we got the samples in this study. Then code the samples and input them in SPSS software to do the data analysis, test and verify the correlation among the indexes, prove the hypothesis, extract the factors which matter when topics derives to issues, and figure out the conditions must be met when general topics rise to public opinion issues.Study found that:1. The formation of a network of public opinion formation includes four stages: personal views publish, circle of discussion spread, opinion leaders involve in, and issues develop to mature.2.unobtrusive topics are more easily to become public issues than obtrusive topics.3. unconventional topics are easier to become public issues than conventional ones.4. Topics which meet some kind of group psychology are more easily to transform to public issues.5. Topics with spill-over effect or resonance effect are more easily to become public issues, and are more effective to promote the settlement of public opinion events.6. The involvement of opinion leaders has no direct impact on the process developing from a common network topic to a public opinion issue, but can affect the survival and the spread of the topics positively. 7. Whether the views in a topic is single-typed or multi-typed has no significant difference in the process common topic transferring to public issue. But in the survival process, topics with diverse views are tend to become single-typed finally.