Research On The Psychological Response And Dissemination Behavior Of Weibo Users In Natural Disaster Emergencies

Frequent occurrence of natural disasters is a basic national condition of China.Typical natural disasters,such as earthquakes,have brought different degrees of harm to people due to their sudden,destructive,and unpredictable characteristics,and intensified the difficulty of government relief and guidance work.At the same time,Weibo,as the largest social media in China,has become an important platform for people to express their opinions and exchange views.The development of "we-media" accelerates the dissemination speed of natural disaster emergencies on the Internet.However,once the natural disaster emergency is improperly handled,it will form network public opinion,trigger negative emotions of the public,and even lead to secondary public opinion disasters.China attaches great importance to the online public opinion guidance of natural disaster emergencies.Nevertheless,the complexity of public opinion dissemination behaviors in natural disaster emergencies brings challenges to the government’s emergency management.In natural disaster emergencies,a large amount of usergenerated content is formed through we-media,and the external expression of psychological language unintentionally reflects people’s internal psychological process.In the context of natural disaster emergencies,the study of Weibo users’ psychological responses and dissemination behavior can effectively discover the trend of online public opinion,improve the pertinence of network public opinion guidance.Furthermore,few studies have focused on the influence of people’s inner psychological responses on information dissemination behaviors.Therefore,from the perspective of psychological language,this paper analyzes the psychological process of Weibo users and explores the Weibo users’ public opinion psychological responses and dissemination behavior in natural disaster emergencies.The study of this paper will help the government and relevant emergency management departments to deeply understand the psychology of users in natural disaster emergencies,to obtain a good early warning of online public opinion in advance,timely control the trend of public opinion,to carry out the early psychological intervention,to effectively improve the effectiveness of online public opinion governance.Based on the technical route of "literature review—theoretical analysis—model construction—empirical research".This paper adopts the stimulus-organism-response(S-O-R)theory,communication persuasion theory,and dual-process theory as the theoretical basis,this paper discusses the Weibo users’ psychological response and public opinion dissemination behavior in natural disaster emergencies through the method of empirical research.This study is divided into three sub-studies,which are as follows:In the first study,a model of the influence of information source stimulus on Weibo users’ psychological responses was constructed,exploring the influence of information source credibility and influence stimulus on Weibo users’ psychological responses in natural disaster emergencies,and the moderating effect of user involvement.The conclusions are as follows:(1)Stimulus of information source credibility has a significant negative impact on users’ primary and secondary cognitive responses,on the contrary,the influence of information source has a positive impact on users’ primary and secondary cognitive responses;(2)The credibility and influence of information sources have a negative impact on users’ positive emotional responses,and a positive impact on users’ negative emotional responses;(3)User involvement weakens the influence of information source credibility on the cognitive and emotional psychological responses of Weibo users.However,the moderating effect between information source influence and user psychological responses is not significant.Therefore,the plural subjects should play a cooperative guiding role in natural disaster emergencies based on the credibility and influence of institutions and personal information sources.Furthermore,the targeted guidance for users with low user involvement should be strengthened.In the second study,a model of the influence of information content stimulation on Weibo users’ psychological response was constructed,exploring the influence of the severity of information content and the susceptibility stimulation on Weibo users’ psychological responses in natural disaster emergencies,and the moderating effect of regulatory focus is also discussed.The conclusions are as follows:(1)Severity and susceptibility stimulation have significant positive effects on the primary and secondary cognitive psychological responses of Weibo users;(2)Severity stimulation have a negative effect on the positive emotional response of Weibo users,and a positive effect on the negative emotional psychological response;the information content of susceptibility has a significant positive influence on the positive and negative emotional and psychological reactions of Weibo users.(3)Regulatory focus has a corresponding moderating effect on the relationship between information content stimulation and Weibo users’ psychological response.Therefore,appropriate psychological language should be selected for different risks communication to users in the case of natural disaster emergencies based on the severity and susceptibility stimulation contained in the information content,to improve the effectiveness of guidance of public opinion dissemination behavior.Furthermore,we should pay attention to providing different targeted guidance strategies for Weibo users with promotion focus and prevention focus respectively.In the third study,a model of the influence of language description frame formed by Weibo users’ psychological responses on public opinion dissemination behavior was constructed,exploring the influence of cognitive and emotional language description frames on public opinion dissemination behavior of Weibo users in natural disasters emergencies,and the moderating effect of psychological distance is also discussed.The conclusions are as follows:(1)The cognition and emotion description frames have a significant positive impact on the user’s information dissemination behavior,and the secondary cognition and positive emotion description frames have a stronger impact on public opinion dissemination behavior;(2)The cognitive description frame has a greater impact on Weibo comment behavior,while the emotional description frame has a greater impact on Weibo reposting behavior;(3)Spatial psychological distance has a significant moderating effect on cognitive and emotional description frames and user information dissemination behavior,while temporal distance and social distance have no significant moderating effect.Therefore,we should adopt the description frames of secondary cognition and positive emotion to communicate with the public about risks in natural disaster emergencies.In addition,the psychological distance presented by Weibo users in microblogs content should be dynamically monitored,in particular,we should strengthen the guidance of users with close spatial psychological distance.This study extends the application scenarios of S-O-R theory and communication persuasion theory in the context of natural disaster emergencies.From the perspective of Weibo users’ psychological processes and psychological responses,the S-O-R theory and dual-process theory are extended to the context of natural disaster emergencies.This study also enriches the research on the dissemination behavior of Weibo users in natural disaster emergencies from the perspective of psychological language.Furthermore,it deepens the research on the boundary of the involvement theory,regulatory focus theory,and construal level theory to Weibo users’ public opinion dissemination behavior in the context of natural disaster emergencies.From the perspective of practice,by using the natural disaster emergency text content in social media,this study guides the government and emergency management department’s timely monitoring of the user’s psychological language use on social media,helping them to deeply understand user psychology and behavior in natural disaster emergencies.Therefore,this study provides a more accurate and operable guidance framework for public opinion dissemination behavior of Weibo users,effectively helps to reduce the risk of negative public opinion brought by natural disaster emergencies,to improve the efficiency of network public opinion governance,and to maintain social security and stability.