Research On Evolution Of Online Public Opinions On Patient-Doctor Disputes

With the rapid development of Internet technology and further awakening of citizens’ consciousness of right,the general public are able to participate in online discussions of patient-doctor disputes,and even play a critical role in triggering and promoting the disputes,thus forming complicated and changeable online public opinions on patient-doctor disputes.Therefore,it remains to be a problem demanding prompt solution for current research on public opinions to conduct in-depth study of how online public opinions on patient-doctor disputes evolve and offer new ideas to respond to public opinions.This paper combines life cycle theory and the theory of system dynamics to study how online public opinions on patient-doctor disputes evolve from two aspects: time evolution and factor operation.According to life cycle theory,online public opinions on patient-doctor disputes can be divided into three stages,namely,formation,dissemination and cooling stages.It is found through the research on online public opinions on patient-doctor disputes that the formation is a short period of time,and whether the patient-doctor disputes are touchy or not,the cognitive differences between doctors and the public,the doctors’ negative image that the media constantly mentioning considering the bonuses brought by public opinions and so on are the main causes that attract public attention.With the development of disputes,the amount of information and the number of topics are on the rise,individual opinions become a group consensus,and online public opinions continue to disseminate.When the disputes are spreading,the media expand the scope of central subject under discussion by digging out hidden subjects,and control where the public opinion goes.Moreover,involved subjects including patients and their families safeguard their rights and struggle to take the initiative in public opinions through multiple channels.As a result,online public opinions have more room for expansion.In the cooling period,with all parties involved,the patient-doctor disputes are gradually straightened out,the general public’s attention shifted,and the development of online public opinions comes to an end.Just like a living body,any external representation is the result of the coordinated operation of internal mechanism.For this reason,in addition to exploring the formation path and manifestation of online public opinions on patient-doctor disputes from the perspective of temporal evolution,it is more important to pay attention to its internal evolution mechanism.Therefore,this paper introduces system dynamics modeling and simulation methods.Patient-doctor disputes,netizens,media,and government are taken as functioning factors,and the causal relationship between variables within the system are shown through the causal loop diagram.On this basis,the stock and flow diagram is drawn to present relevant factors in the evolution of patient-doctor disputes in the form of formulas so as to transform from qualitative analysis to quantitative analysis on online public opinions.In the meantime,case simulation is carried out to figure out ways to improve external behaviors based on internal operation results of different subsystems.In the end,on the basis of two different kinds of evolutions,and in combination with the advantages of time-based longitudinal evolution and factor-based system evolution,a new countermeasure against public opinions with time as the support and factors as the content is formed to provide more sound and complementary suggestions in response to online public opinions on patient-doctor disputes.