Evolution and regulation of online public opinion on Weibo: a corpus-based topic-sentiment aggregation analysis
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Pinyu Zhou
Pinyu Zhou is a research fellow of Centre for Police discourse and Behaviour Research in School of International Studies and Cooperation, Zhejiang Police College. His research field include language and law and cybersecurity.
Ning Ye is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Zhejiang Police College, Director of Centre for Police discourse and Behaviour Research. She holds a PhD in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics from Zhejiang University, where she specialized in Forensic Linguistics. She is an Asia Advisor of International Journal for the Semiotics of Law and Pragmatics & Society. She was a Visiting Scholar of Centre for Forensic Linguistics of Aston University, UK. Her research interests are language and law, semiotics, English for specific purposes with a particular focus on policing and discourse analysis.
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Jiamin Pei
Jiamin Pei is a research professor at Zhejiang Gongshang University’s School of Foreign Languages. She has published widely in the fields of corpus linguistics, legal discourse, media discourse, and cyber studies in refereed journals such as
Social Semiotics ,Discourse and Communication , andTerminology .
Abstract
This study investigates the evolution and regulation of online public opinion on social media Weibo, focusing on the “Enterprise N Incident” in the tea beverage industry. Using social media texts as a dataset, this study utilizes topic modeling and sentiment analysis to extract key topics and analyze their corresponding sentiment trends. Specifically, it explores how sentiment dynamics shift across different stages of public discourse, revealing the underlying patterns of opinion formation and transformation. Furthermore, it examines the interplay among emerging topics, sentiment fluctuations, and regulatory mechanisms, shedding light on how public sentiment aggregation is influenced by digital governance and platform policies. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of online opinion evolution, offering implications for platform monitoring, crisis management strategies, and the development of more effective regulatory systems in digital communication environments.
About the authors
Pinyu Zhou is a research fellow of Centre for Police discourse and Behaviour Research in School of International Studies and Cooperation, Zhejiang Police College. His research field include language and law and cybersecurity.
Ning Ye is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Zhejiang Police College, Director of Centre for Police discourse and Behaviour Research. She holds a PhD in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics from Zhejiang University, where she specialized in Forensic Linguistics. She is an Asia Advisor of International Journal for the Semiotics of Law and Pragmatics & Society. She was a Visiting Scholar of Centre for Forensic Linguistics of Aston University, UK. Her research interests are language and law, semiotics, English for specific purposes with a particular focus on policing and discourse analysis.
Jiamin Pei is a research professor at Zhejiang Gongshang University’s School of Foreign Languages. She has published widely in the fields of corpus linguistics, legal discourse, media discourse, and cyber studies in refereed journals such as Social Semiotics, Discourse and Communication, and Terminology.
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Research funding: This work was supported by China National University Student Innovation & Entrepreneurship Development Program (Grant No. 202311483016) and Research Project of Zhejiang Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences (Grant No. 2024B043).
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Legal discourse in transition: technology, methodology, and sociology
- Promoting trust and security in the digital domain: a discourse analysis of legal constructs
- The ‘law of code’: the EU and China’s converging legal discourse on regulating algorithms
- State responsibility in the context of cyberwarfare: dilemma identification and path reconstruction
- Mapping the landscape of cybersecurity research: a bibliometric analysis
- Evolution and regulation of online public opinion on Weibo: a corpus-based topic-sentiment aggregation analysis
- Towards autonomy of China’s legal terminology system: a corpus-based analysis of terminological variation in criminal procedure legislation
- Judicial jigsaw and power dynamics: a cognitive-functional analysis of Chinese courtroom discourse
- Annie refuses to be Annie: the development of women’s rights in the Caribbean from Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John
- Book Review
- Xiaobo Dong, Jie Guo: Chinese Rule of Law Path and Cultivation of Foreign-Related Rule of Law Talents
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Legal discourse in transition: technology, methodology, and sociology
- Promoting trust and security in the digital domain: a discourse analysis of legal constructs
- The ‘law of code’: the EU and China’s converging legal discourse on regulating algorithms
- State responsibility in the context of cyberwarfare: dilemma identification and path reconstruction
- Mapping the landscape of cybersecurity research: a bibliometric analysis
- Evolution and regulation of online public opinion on Weibo: a corpus-based topic-sentiment aggregation analysis
- Towards autonomy of China’s legal terminology system: a corpus-based analysis of terminological variation in criminal procedure legislation
- Judicial jigsaw and power dynamics: a cognitive-functional analysis of Chinese courtroom discourse
- Annie refuses to be Annie: the development of women’s rights in the Caribbean from Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John
- Book Review
- Xiaobo Dong, Jie Guo: Chinese Rule of Law Path and Cultivation of Foreign-Related Rule of Law Talents
