Research On Opinion Leaders On Zhihu.com

Zhihu.com is a highly welcomed social Q&A website because of the fully open environment and rational atmosphere.Based on Q&A,Zhihu.com maximizes the correspondence to the individual demands of information,which enhances the sharing of experiential knowledge.People with similar interests and preferences gather together on Zhihu.com.The opinion leaders are those who write abundant answers with quality.They are recognized and followed by other users and therefore have a huge impact on others' attitudes and behaviors.Three factors promote the rising of opinion leaders on Zhihu.com.The first one is the new medium circumstance.New medium have provided quite enough medium resource for everyone,which may restructure the existing structure of voice and power,so that everyone is access to become opinion leader.The second one is the social network technology.With a pretty low threshold,social network technology is convenient for anyone who wants to express him or herself and participate in public affairs.The last one is the knowledge,which is kind of cultural capital.Knowledge gives opinion leaders power and authority in the knowledge-sharing community.Opinion leaders could transform the knowledge to economic capital and social capital.From a perspective of social network,opinion leaders are the key nodes at the center of the group and they naturally establish wide connections,through which other nodes realize mutual communication.By analyzing the centrality in the matrix,social network analysis was used to pick up the opinion leader in this research.The results indicated that opinion leaders on Zhihu.com are mostly well-educated and apparently active in generating contents,and their influence highly depend on their expertise.What is more,it is obvious that the voice is concentrated,for few opinion leaders have occupied overwhelming attention and resources.It also shows that organizations and agencies are newly rising opinion leaders on Zhihu.com.Opinion leaders on Zhihu.com not only produce large amount of original contents with quality and affect users' agenda setting,but also play a significant role in building values,strengthening cohesion,maintaining atmosphere and creating culture.They are the power elites in the community at the same time,who have occupied most of cultural capital in cultural field and keep highly control of power and public opinion.Closely circle interaction accelerates to maintain their status and interests.In these ways do they develop self-cognition,earn self-esteem,and finally become the charismatic authority and gain social trust and capital.Under the circumstance of the internet culture,-opinion leaders-on Zhihu.com may commit anomie behaviors.For instance,they give up professionalism for more attention,abuse other users' trust,distribute improper values or information,even make up lies for money,and issue irrational statements to mislead public opinion when social events occurred.Therefore,opinion leaders themselves shall enhance their professionalism and improve the media literacy,while the managers of Zhihu.com ought to balance rules against the freedom,preventing opinion leaders' improper words and deeds and inspiring their enthusiasm for producing simultaneously.Besides,users on Zhihu.com could improve the media literacy so as to make reasonable use of their rights on supervision and management,for Zhihu.com is operated with the character of self-organization.