Modeling Public Opinion Reversal Process with the Considerations of External Intervention Information and Individual Internal Characteristics

Abstract

With the rapid development of “we media” technology, external information about the same sudden hot social event is often involved repetitiously, leading to frequent public opinion reversal. However, the phenomenon of public opinion reversal process usually has a long-lasting duration and spreads wide, making the event itself attract the widespread attention of ordinary people. Focusing on the public opinion reversal process of sudden social hot topic (a popular and widely discussed issue), this paper firstly identifies the internal and external factors that affect the reversal, namely individual internal characteristics and external intervention information. Secondly, information intensity and the amount of information perceived by individuals are introduced to describe the impact of external intervention information on the public opinion reversal. Thirdly, the parameters of individual attention and conservation are used to describe the process of individual’s selection of external information, so as to reveal the influence of the internal characteristics on public opinion reversal, and then build a public opinion reversal model. Fourthly, the effects of information intensity and individual attention, as well as individual conservation on the process of public opinion reversal are analyzed by simulation experiment. Simulation results show that: (1) the intensity of external intervention information affects the direction and degree of public opinion reversal; (2) when individual conservation is strong or individual attention is weak, even if external intervention information is strong, there will still be no obvious reversal of public opinion. Subsequently, the rationality and effectiveness of the proposed model are verified by a real case. Finally, some recommendations and policy implications are also given.