How Opinion Leaders Respond To Poll News

In Japan,opinion polls play an important role as part of postwar democratic politics.Prior studies have explored how the media used opinion polls to shape public opinion in the age of traditional media,however,in the age of social media the process by which key players respond to opinion polls has changed dramatically-either public or politicians can comment on the poll results.Based on this,this paper aims to reconsider how opinion leaders’ responses to polling news in the social media era affect the political function of public opinion polls in Japan,using the Game Frame and Issue Frame as the theoretical framework and a content analysis approach to explore three questions:(1)Who in social media act as opinion leaders in response to mainstream media poll coverage?(2)Do opinion leaders prefer to use the Game Frame or Issue Frame when responding to poll coverage?(3)When responding to poll coverage using the Issue Frame,what topics do opinion leaders focus on that are more likely to receive a response from the public?The study found that among the opinion leaders responding to poll news on Twitter,public opinion leaders,followed by mainstream media accounts and Internet media accounts;politicians accounts,party official accounts;critics and writers;professional and freelance journalists.There is no obvious difference between political party opinion leaders and non-party opinion leaders in the way of using the Issue Frame and the Game Frame.Politicians are good at using Issue Frame,using polls as an illustrative tool to discuss issues and organize favorable public opinion,and present policy positions in the form of public opinion support;they also resort to the Game Frame and actively organize election campaigns.Players with different identities emerged on social media to supplement,disseminate and comment on poll news,which has caused major changes in the influence mechanism of poll news on social politics in the traditional historical context.On social media Twitter,news organizations,as polling agencies and polling news production agencies,on the one hand,provide rich resources for the interaction between the government,politicians,and the public,and create a more open and broad space for political exchanges.However,at the same time,the Japanese news media and the ruling government were simultaneously placed under a new kind of public surveillance—the public’s trust in the results of polls decreased,and the relationship between the media and the government was constantly scrutinized.The role of traditional contextual opinion polls in stabilizing politics is being weakened.