“The Controversy over a Teacher’s First Escape in the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake”: Exploring Folk-mentality Reflected via the Internet


  •  Yang Liu    
  •  Bencheng Liu    
  •  Lili Ai    
  •  Xuefeng Gao    

Abstract

This study extracted the netizen’s comments about Meizhong Fan’s case by using the method of systematic
sampling on the Homepage of MSN China. It employed a method of content analysis to explore the
folk-mentality reflected via the Internet. The study shows that both the affirmative and the negative netizens
don’t have significant differences in the comment dates. Both of them tend to report comments at the weekend.
But, both the affirmative and the negative netizens have significant differences in the comment time. The
affirmative netizens are significantly more than the negative netizens in browsing the Internet in the daytime, and
at night the negative netizens are significantly more than the affirmative netizens in browsing the Internet. Both
the affirmative and the negative netizens have significant differences in dialectical dimension, and the
affirmative netizens are tend to be dialectical. Both the affirmative and the negative messages have significant
differences between emotional / rational dimensions, between the forgivable / unforgivable dimensions and also
between the aggressive / unaggressive dimensions. The folk-mentality of netizens to the Meizhong Fan case
tends to be emotional, unforgivable and aggressive.


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