Research On Opinion Expression Of Weibo Hot Topic Users On The Spiral Of Silence Theory

Hot Topic,as a functional module of Sina Weibo,allows users to perceive the opinion climate more easily in certain topic environment due to its feature of real-timeness and labeling.Will this technical function and the environment it creates bring any change on the Spiral of Silence theory or affect the expression strategy of users? In order to answer the question,the study chooses a controversial topic,Chongqing Bus Crash event as an example,mainly exams two traditional predictors of the Spiral silence theory,fear of isolation and opinion climate perception,to test the applicability of the theory on Weibo hot topic environment.Secondly,the study aims to explore new factors that impact the willingness of college students during the process of their opinion expression.A mix of qualitative and quantitative methods is applied in this research.Deep interviews were done among 17 college students(age of 18~30)in Shanghai from different schools via snowball sampling.The results show that:1.The visual advantage provided by the microblog hot topic list has weakened college student’ fear of isolation,but no correlation was found between fear of isolation and outspokenness.2.The opinion climate perception is positively correlated with the frequency of expressing personal opinions on Weibo account,and negatively correlated with the frequency of silence.3.The power distance in Weibo’s hot topic environment and the frequency of forwarding or replying recognized posts indicating support and the frequency of forwarding or replying unrecognized posts indicating opposition are negatively correlated.4.The risk of expression in the hot topic environment of Weibo is positively correlated with the frequency of silence,and the influence is relatively strong.5.The individual efficacy on Weibo is positively related to the frequency of forwarding or reply unrecognized posts to indicate opposition,and the correlation is strong.