Molding And Flowing Of Memory And Emotion: The Change Of Public Opinion Regarding The "Karamay Fire"

Among the numerous disaster events,the "Karamay fire" that took place on December8,1994 in Xinjiang has its particularity.The fire broke out 25 years ago.The whole nation mourned the death of 284 primary and secondary school students.The public anger was aroused by a "let the leaders go first" report in China Youth Daily.However,the fire quickly fell silent in the official silence.It did not return to public view until it was excavated by Southern Weekend in 2006.Different from the silence of the government and the media,the discussion among the people has never stopped.With the help of the internet,a new media platform,the public has written a collective memory of the "Karamay fire",which is different from the official narrative,and also presents a diverse and complicated emotional context.Starting from the collective memory theory,with the help of social network analysis,LDA topic model,emotion analysis and other research methods,this paper makes a deep excavation of the discussion text of Baidu Tieba from 2006 to 2018,in order to outline the public memory picture of the " Karamay fire",track its emotional change track,and try to explain the logic behind memory molding and emotional change.The main findings are as follows: first,the memory of " Karamay fire" in Baidu tieba is the result of multi-party game and cooperative writing.Reporters of "Let Leaders Go First" occupied the core position of the discussion network.The "truth-seeker" has only had limited effect in the first and middle period,but has quit the memory writing network under the stigma of "anti-rumor seeker".In the end,the reporter who "let the leader go first" once again won the right to write the memory and dominated the memory writing of the fire.In addition,the "silent mourners" had their own logic of memory writing,but they did not last until the end.The "onlookers" and "anger-venting" also left unique footnotes of memory in this discussion through "top stickers" and " abuse".Second,the "Karamay fire" memory shaped by netizens is distorted and atrophic.The Karamay fire shown by Baidu Tieba used to include complicated memories such as questioning the truth,discussing safety issues,commemorating children and observing silence.However,it was eventually drowned out by the sound of " letting leaders go first" and became a shrinking memory that lost many details.Third,there are seven emotions in the "Karamay fire",including "hate","sadness","good","surprise","fear","happy" and "anger",and "hate" and "sadness" are the most significant.After 12 years of discussion,the "hate" mood keeps rising,the "mourning" mood begins to decline,and other secondary emotions are facing extinction.The Karamay fire,which originally carried many emotions such as sadness,anger and surprise,eventually became a single carrier of the conflict between the government and the people.Fourth,the emotional changes in the "Karamay fire" may be jointly controlled by the discipline of emotional system and the pattern of difference order.Among them,the surge of "hate" emotions is closely related to the current social structure and realistic conditions,while the "sadness" emotions brought about by " empathy" and "moral shock" are gradually dispelled by "playful" netizen expressions.