Researches On Network Opinion Leader For Ideological And Political Education

The rapid popularization of new media results in a constantly changing and unrestrained public opinion environment on the internet. The netizens involving in the environment are not only the receivers of mass information, but also the "king-like" information posters. The network opinion leader is playing a more and more impressive and irreplaceable role in information publishing and propagation and guidance of public opinion on internet. The ideological and political education refers to that a certain class, society and organization conduct exchanges on thought and emotion through many ways, guide its members to receive and accept certain social ideology, political opinions and code of ethics, promote the balancing and harmonious development of its members’ knowledge, emotion, belief, will and behavior and improve their moral education to independently carry out social practice and activities. How to initiatively cope with the challenges brought about by the technology of new media, voluntarily step off current dilemma of "aphasia" and effectively guide the network opinion leader has already become a problem to be addressed which restricts the effectiveness of ideological and political education. This article is about to study and focus on solving this central problem.The so-called network opinion leader refers to the network information poster who takes the internet as a platform and publishes opinions and makes comments about hot spots of society, which are widely accepted and highly agreed by netizens, and then they will exert a significant influence on guiding the trend of network opinions and the netizens’ comments. The "double-edge sword" function of network opinion leader plays a positive and negative role on the development of people’s ideological and political quality and the theme education on line. When we want to study the problem of network opinion leader under the scope of ideological and political education, we should firstly solve the network opinion leader’s cognition about the value of ideological and political education. If the internet is only a dustbin for people’s random "spitting", if the network opinion is as uncontrollable as the fast-moving "tornado" and if the network opinion leader is just the spokesman for expressing people’s "excessive" emotion, then there will be no inevitability and necessity of application study on ideological and political education. It is just because the network opinion leader will exert a deep influence on people’s world outlook, life outlook and value in the propagation of public opinion, which highlights the necessity of providing ideological and political education to network opinion leader. Firstly, this paper gives the definition of network opinion leader and relevant concepts. Based on the theories of ideological and political education, mass-communication and network communication, it points out that the network opinion leader has four distinct characteristics, namely, the diversification of real identity, the softness of power, the extensiveness of scope of influence and the core position of self-quality, as well as concludes three major functions of network opinion leader in terms of information processing, influence on netizens1cognition, attitude and behavior and influence on trend of network opinion, which provides a practical precondition for applying network opinion leader in ideological and political education.Secondly, this paper also explains the application value of network opinion leader in ideological and political education from the angle philosophy, which mainly include the network opinion leader’s value of subjectivity, purposefulness and guidance on ideological and political education when they are regarded as the "poster","gate-keeper" and "guide" of internet opinion, the practical value in terms of "cocoon effect" of function, the "pertinence" of opinions and the "interactivity" with netizens and the methodological value in the aspects of the potentiality of acting path and the convertibility and independency of example education, which lay a theoretical foundation for observing, analyzing and guiding the phenomenon of network opinion leader in the field of ideological and political education.Thirdly, this paper sets up the identification index system of college student network opinion leader based on www.renren.com. Through considering and analyzing the period of time and the influence by contents of discussion topics and applying and quantizing statistical analysis method, the corresponding analysis matrix which reflects the communication relationship among college students is constructed and then identify the activists through comparing the three quantitative indexes, namely, the degree central ity, betweenness centrality and closeness centrality, so as to find out the "maximum likelihood" network opinion leader based on identification coefficient and questionnaire and finally confirm the same through in-depth interview. It concludes that the network opinion leader of college students features in changeability, reality and constructiveness and put forward the oriented strategy for guidance and conduct trace analysis on the effect.Fourthly, taking Guo Mingyi (a philanthropist from Anshan in Liaoning) as an example, this dissertation put forwards the cultivation methods and measures for providing ideological and political education to network opinion leader. Based on conducting empirical analysis on the daily operation, the number of fans, the geographical distribution and the hottest Sina micro-blogs, it can be concluded that the successful experience of the phenomenon of Guo Mingyi, namely, seeking truth from facts is the prerequisite, the form of message posting is the condition, the quality of message posting is the key and the method art is the guarantee, and put forward the specific cultivation methods and ways such as carry out online and offline interaction, setting network models with both political integrity and professional competence, adopting colorful ways of expression and creating practical circumstances for easy communication among netizens.Finally, this study comprehensively and systematically bring up four strategies for applying ideological and political education to affect network opinion leader, namely, the identification guidance, the concentrated education, the technological follow-up and the governance by law. It puts forward to set up a scientific identification index system for all kinds of network opinion leaders, realizing correct and convenient identification; establish the long-acting dialogue mechanism for network opinion leaders and apply moderate principle for effective guidance; highlight cultivation of professional and stable network opinion leaders for different network platforms selected from online observers, network public opinion analysts, role models, famous experts and scholars and ideological and political education workers; enhance the network opinion leader’s network media literacy, network opinion guidance ability, ideological and political quality and high social responsibility; reinforce construction level of network platform, build and improve network opinion monitoring and evaluation system and formulate relevant laws and regulations of network for regulating the network opinion leader’s comments and behaviors. This paper concludes four strategies which can basically "keep" the network opinion leaders fully bringing their active and positive role into play.