The Formation Of Public Opinion In SNS

The forming of public opinion in network has been a hot topic in the recentresearch. There are many paper discuss from the perspective of group behavior andinterpersonal network, but less from the influence factors of individual behavior andmechanism of public opinion.Uses and Gratifications Theory analyzed the reason that why the public use andadoption of the Internet or other new media to air one’s opinion from the perspective ofmotivation, this paper based on Kim&Grunig’s (2011) theory, trying to unify theSituational Theory of Publics and The Theory of Problem Solving, to establishing atheoretical framework of the motives of communicating behaviors in social media. TheTheory of Problem Solving refines the independent variables as problem recognition,constraint recognition, involvement recognition and situational motivation in problemsolving; for independent variables including the information forfending, informationpermitting, information forwarding, information sharing, information search andinformation attending, to establish a model to explain why communication behaviorshappened in social media.Based on a survey with about233college students participants to taking the threeissues:Korean dramas "Man from the Stars", house prices in China and the FlightMH370as situational variables grouping, collecting respondents’ information behaviorin the social network of Renren, QQ, Microblog, WeChat. And using StructuralEquation Model (SEM) to analysis and explain the formation of public opinion in SNS.we found that the fitting goodness indicators of the model all reach in a good condition.