The Study On Strategies Of Guiding Public Opinion Under The New Media Environment

The new media have tremendous energy to rapidly mobilize and polymerize social forces, to form public opinions. China is in a critical period of the transformation of economic and social development. The transition process is not only a period of strategic opportunities, but also a period that contradictions show protrudingly in. Various social contradictions easily form negative public opinions that is not conducive to the stable and sustainable development of economy and society in the new media aggregation and amplification. How to guide public opinions in new media era is an important topic that we face.The thesis is divided into six parts of this topic.Part I:IntroductionThe introduction part analyzes the significance of the research strategies that guide public opinions in new media era, and provides an overview of the domestic and foreign scholars’research in this field. The scholars’research in the new media and public opinion formation has two main approaches:One is the traditional social science approach. The research results are:two-step flow of communication theory, the agenda-setting function theory, cultivation theory and the spiral of silence theory. The other is the sociophysics approach developed in recent years. A series of public opinion evolution models, such as Ising (ferromagnetic bodies) model, Sznajd (missionaries) model, Galam model, Deffuant (negotiators) model, Krause&Hegselmann (opportunists) model have been established.Part II:Some basic theoretical issues of guiding public opinions under the new media environmentThis part firstly defines the basic concepts of the media, new media, public opinion, and analyzes some of the most important theories of social psychology and communication studies:herd behavior and the spiral of silence, two-step flow of communication and opinion leaders, gatekeeper and agenda-setting, prejudice and the default point of view. These bases are used to build a public opinion dynamics model, a message propagation model. Then, according to these classical researches of social psychology and communication studies, two-state opinion dynamics model proposed by French sociophysicist Serge Galam is improved to make it more in line with actual public opinion spread. The final analysis compares the difference of the message propagation mechanism and opinion dissemination mechanism; a separate message propagation model is proposed.Part III:The characteristics of the new media and its challenge to the traditional public opinion control methodThis part summarizes the characteristics of several major network media and mobile media appeared in the process of the development of the new media: enormous information capacity, fast speed of propagation and update, open and equality of dissemination and acceptance. Then it is put forward that the new media with these characteristics exert a strong influence on people’s behavior, psychologies and dissemination of opinion:information communication right generalization leads to weakening of the effect of the public agenda-setting; herd mentality weakened results in that the spiral of silence is difficult to rotate; credibility of the government and traditional media declines. These effects lead to the traditional method of controlling public opinion is difficult to play a role in the new media environment.Part IV:Analysis of key issues of public opinion formation and evolution under the new media environmentThis part using the improved Galam opinion dynamics model and the message propagation model studies the spread of rumors, opinion leaders and groups prejudice influence on public opinions.Part V:Countermeasures of guiding public opinions in the new media environment Based on above analysis, this part puts forward five public opinion guidance countermeasures:the real-time monitoring of network public opinion, the social public opinion, to establish an effective public opinion reaction mechanism; to Strengthen the construction of network mainstream public opinion fields; comprehensive and timely information disclosure, to prevent the spread of rumors; to bring into full play the role of opinion leaders; to strengthen the construction of socialist core value system, and to enhance the credibility of the government.Part VI:Summary and OutlookThis last part of the thesis summarizes the full text and puts forward that the next goal is that the public opinion evolution model and message propagation model will be extended to complex network of small-world, scale-free characteristics and community structure, to more accurately portray the real opinion evolution process, to propose a more effective guiding principles and policies of public opinion.