The Construction,Cause And Influence Of Public Sympathy In The Public Opinion Of The New Media In China

In recent years,the public opinion of the new media in China has been developing rapidly and affecting all aspects of the society."Public sympathy",one of the driving forces for the development of public opinion in the new media,has not attracted enough attention of the press and communication scholars.Based on literature review,case analysis and discourse analysis,this paper takes "Giang Ge"case as an example to sort out the development,construction,causes and effects of public sympathy in Chinese public opinion in the new media environment.Research shows that the development of public sympathy is closely related to the development of media.Under the new media environment,public sympathy is not only the driving force of the development of public opinion,but also in many cases,"public sympathy" has become the new media opinion itself.The construction of public sympathy depends on the interaction among the people involving,media and audience.The people involving events tend to publish selective information on social media to produce public sympathy and carry out the emotional struggle,and the traditional media ask for the rational and impartial view of public sympathy but social media public opinion leaders make use of public sympathy to lit up the audience's emotion.As a result,the audience are forwarding and commenting on the opinions which are in lines with their own emotional expectation and do not pay attention to the facts and the truth,and all of these show the feature of "post-truth era".The construction of public sympathy is result from social transformation,consumerism,entertainment and "post-truth era,".In the social transformation period,people's "structure of feeling" has also changed greatly,"public sympathy" can become a crossing-class collective emotion;in consumer society,public consumption and entertainment has become more popular,as a kind of cultural consumer goods,new media public opinion needs to create "moral shock" to attract the audience in order to avoid the "compassion fatigue" and indifference;in "post-truth era",the facts and the truth is fading and people's position and feelings,emotional popular opinion is more and more alluring.Overall,the "public sympathy" can be divided into rational and irrational public opinion in the new media.The rational "public sympathy" is a kind of important social critical force,promoting social improvement and development,and maintaining social fairness and justice;the non-rational "public sympathy" is a kind of destructive power,hurting the parties of public opinion events,and causing the violence of public opinion and social conflict.However,recognizing "public sympathy" should go beyond the two opposite mode of narrow emotion rationality,and put public sympathy in emotional practice.This kind of emotional practice is a way of resistance at the bottom of the society.With the participation of different social groups,the identity of individual or group is realized in this process.In the long run,the public may get more rational social critical power in emotional practice,and cultivate the individual into a qualified modern citizen.