Abstract
Internet public opinion events at universities in China occurred frequently, creating painful repercussions for reputation and stability of colleges and universities. To better cope with the problem, this paper explores an evolutionary mechanism of the university Internet public opinion events. Firstly, we discuss the interactions and behavior of three key participants: an Internet medium, university students as a whole, and administration. Secondly, we construct a tripartite evolutionary game model consisting of an Internet medium, student group, and university administration and then analyze and obtain the differential dynamic equations and equilibrium points. Subsequently, the evolutionary stable equilibrium is further analyzed. Finally, we employ numerical studies to examine how the tripartite behavior choices affect evolutionary paths and evolutionary equilibrium strategies. Results are derived as follows: under certain conditions, there exists an asymptotically stable equilibrium point for the tripartite evolutionary game. On the one hand, appropriate penalties and rewards should be provided to foster objectives and fair behaviors of the network medium. On the other hand, university students should be educated and guided to deal rationally with negative effects of Internet public opinion events. Moreover, online real-name authentication is an important and necessary measure. Finally, the university administration should release truthful, timely, and comprehensive information of Internet public opinion events to mitigate potential negative impacts.
Highlights
In recent years, Internet public opinion events occurred frequently across colleges and universities in China
Several incidents recently made to headlines on the Internet social media such as “South China University of Technology tampered postgraduate entrance exam scores” [1] and “Foreign students’ study partners at the Shandong University” [2]. e resulting negative public opinions arose from the students on the campus and spread rapidly throughout China, bringing reputation and public relation damage to the universities involved in these events
Mishandling of and inappropriate response to Internet public opinion events by Chinese university administrations can quickly turn to polarized group protests or mass incidents
Summary
Internet public opinion events occurred frequently across colleges and universities in China. With rapid development of new generations of information technology, new social media on the Internet, such as WeChat, Weibo, and mobile apps, have become popular among college and university students in China. Interactive nature, and pervasiveness of the new social media, university students can gain easy access to and add their personal comments on public opinion events, further aggravating their abrupt development and amplifying their negative impacts. Is paper aims to address this challenge by developing a tripartite evolutionary game model consisting of a network medium, university student group, and university administration. A numerical example is given in Section 4 to analyze the spread mechanism of Internet public opinion events at universities in China.
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