Study On The Spread Of Internet Rumor Based On The Emotional Contagion Theory

With the rapid development of Internet technology and application,Internet rumor has gradually become one of the important factors endangering the network public opinion and the smooth operation of society.To explore the spread mechanism of Internet rumors is conducive to the further development of detection scheme and rationalization of rumor rejection process,to minimize the negative impact of Internet rumor.At present,most of the domestic researches on the spread of Internet rumors assume that Internet users are rational individuals,ignoring the influence of individual emotions on the spread of Internet rumors.However,online rumor is often mixed with emotional display in its text content in reality,to achieve the purpose of emotional infection to the viewers.Based on this,this paper studies the spread of emotional Internet rumors through the situational questionnaire in the quasi experimental method.Firstly,according to the theory of emotional contagion in psychology,this paper puts forward the hypothesis that the emotional display of Internet rumors will affect the individual emotions of the viewers,and then affect their rumor intention.In the research model,the emotional susceptibility of regulatory variables is added,and with reference to previous studies,it is assumed that there is a mediating effect of regulation in the model.Secondly,the data were collected by quasi experimental method.In the situational questionnaire,the mature scale is used to measure the variables involved in this study,which guarantees the reliability and validity of the data.This study involved four experimental groups: positive emotion display group,neutral emotion display group,negative emotion display group and non emotion display group.Each group distributed 120 situational questionnaires,a total of 480,and finally obtained 353 valid questionnaire data.Thirdly,after the descriptive statistics and reliability validity test of the questionnaire data,SPSS and SPSS process were used to test the four groups of hypotheses.The test results basically support the "Internet rumor propagation model based on emotional infection" proposed in this study.Finally,according to the research process and the results of hypothesis testing,the contribution and Enlightenment of this study are discussed.Based on the limitations of the data cross-section design,sample characteristics,and the second communication between browsers,the future research prospect of Internet rumor communication under the theory of emotional infection is proposed.