Research On The Influencing Factors And Paths Of The Formation Of Secondary Public Opinion Under The View Of Government Response

In the risk society,public opinion incidents occur frequently.The Internet enhances the influence of public opinion,which has become the main area of the public opinion.Everyone is not only a participant in the network,but also a supervisor of government behavior.As the main actor of social management,the government needs to respond to events and public opinions.If the response is improper,secondary public opinion will easily be derived,which always contains criticism of the government and its staffs.Secondary public opinion has become a significant phenomenon after the occurrence of social hot events,in which the public is easily emotional.If secondary public opinion is not handled properly,it will easily lead to the emergence of online rumors,online violence and public opinion trials,which are not conducive to the construction of a healthy network environment and seriously damage the government’s credibility.Therefore,it is imperative to improve the government’s responsiveness and prevent secondary public opinion risk.From the perspective of government response,this paper analyzes 40 cases of public events to explore the influencing factors and the paths of the formation of secondary public opinion,which provides suggestions for the government to carry out public opinion governance effectively.Firstly,using case analysis to explore the influencing factors of the formation of secondary public opinion.According to relevant theories and literature,create a table which contains characteristics of 40 cases.This paper wants to find which kind of government response will affect the formation of secondary public opinion by descriptive statistical analysis.Secondly,the qualitative comparative analysis method is used to verify the results of case analysis,which is combined with cases to explore the paths of the formation of secondary public opinion.This paper sets timeliness,frequency,sufficiency,conformity degree and coercive action of the government response as five independent variables.Then using fsQCA to verify the relationship between independent variables and dependent variables(whether the secondary public opinion is generated).What’s more,Using the emotion appraisal theory and 40 cases to describe and explain the software’s running results,which shows how the government’s response led to secondary public opinion.Through empirical research,this paper presents the following conclusion:(1)There are some factors like timeliness,frequency,sufficiency,conformity degree and coercive action of the government response,which are strongly correlated with whether secondary public opinion is generated or not.Among them,losing focus of government response is the necessary condition for the formation of secondary public opinion.(2)This paper finds three configuration results of government response,which lead to secondary public opinion.Conformity degree and coercive action of the government response are core conditions of one of the configuration results.And the core conditions of the other two configuration results are frequency and conformity degree of the government response.(3)Based on the analysis of three configuration results,this paper finds two paths of the formation of secondary public opinion: one is the coercive-unfocused path,and one is the disconfirmation-unfocused path,which lead to public’s poor appraisal in emotion.Then the public has negative feelings towards the government,deriving secondary public opinion.Finally,based on the paths of the formation of secondary public opinion,this paper put forward some suggestions for the government: Grasp the public’s concerns,do accurate response;meet public’s expectations and respond professionally;guide public’s participation and make reasonable response;focus on public values and respond effectively.