A novel risk communication model for online public opinion dissemination that integrates the SIR and Markov chains

Abstract

With the rapid advancement of the internet, particularly the widespread adoption of social media, online public opinion at universities has emerged as a critical issue for both societal and educational governance. Research on the dissemination of public opinion-based risks is often based on infectious disease transmission models. However, these studies largely overlook the stochastic nature of public opinion communication and rely on subjective assumptions regarding the size of the opinion-sensitive population. To address these limitations, we propose a novel public opinion risk dissemination model that integrates the susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) framework with Markov chain theory and develops a PIA to quantitatively estimate the scale of the opinion-sensitive population. Through intervention analysis of public opinion, we examined the impacts of the transmission rate, immune rate, and number of susceptible individuals on the velocity, duration, and scope of public opinion dissemination. The results indicate that significant differences exist in the size of the opinion-sensitive population and the transmission rate across different public opinion events. Furthermore, reducing the size of the opinion-sensitive population is a core strategy for suppressing the size of the communication peak, increasing the immune rate is a key measure for shortening the communication cycle and lowering the transmission rate is an important approach for delaying the time to reach the peak of public opinion, though excessively low transmission rates should be avoided. On the basis of in-depth analyses of the mechanisms underlying public opinion risk communication, precise early warning and intervention strategies for universities and relevant administrative bodies are established to enhance the effectiveness of public opinion management.

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