Chinese Journal of Sociology

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Typological Analysis of Online Extreme EmotionBased Groups and Its SocioPolitical Implications：An Empirical Examination of the Chinese Internet Social Mentality Survey (2014)

Author 1：GUI Yong，Department of Sociology，Fudan University； Author 2：LI Xiumei，Department of Sociology，Fudan University；Author 3：ZHENG Wen，Journalism School，Fudan University； Author 4：HUANG Ronggui，Department of Sociology，Fudan University   

  • Online:2015-09-20 Published:2015-09-20
  • Contact: HUANG Ronggui，Department of Sociology，Fudan University E-mail:rghuang@fudan.edu.cn
  • Supported by:
    The research was supported by Ministry of Education’s Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation (14YJA840005)，the Philosophical Social Science Project of Shanghai Municipality (2013BSH001)，and Shanghai Municipal Education Commission Key Project of Scientific Research and Innovation (13ZS005).

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Abstract: This paper takes a social media user centered approach to develop a topology of social groups by examining their expressions of extreme emotions in the social media space，and further scrutinizes the background characteristics，political attitudes and online actions of each group.Using the Chinese Internet Social Mentality Survey (2014)，our latent class analyses of online expression of extreme emotions reveal five groups of Weibo users，including the emotionally nonextremists，the politically apathetic，the extreme patriotic，the political cynics，and the populists. In terms of political positions，the populists can be seen as grassroots leftists；the patriotic are proregime leftists；the politically apathetic are moderate rightists，whilst the cynics are radical rightists.In terms of political attitudes，the cynics hold the most negative attitude towards the regime，and the populists have the lowest levels of political trust.On the contrary，the patriotic have the most positive attitude towards the regime and the highest levels of political trust. In terms of online actions，the populists are the most likely to engage in cyber violence and to participate in online protests，followed by the cynics and the patriotic.Overall，the politically apathetic have negative political attitudes，but the likelihood of action is slim.The patriotic are attitudinally the most positive，and willing to engage in radical online actions.Both the cynics and the populists have strong negative political attitudes，and are likely to engage in online actions， which make these two groups worth of further attention. Based on these findings，this paper contends that the study of online expression of extreme emotions is an import window through which we can better understand the Chinese network society.
 

Key words: extreme emotion , latent class analysis
, populism , political apathy , microblog , patriotism