A Systems Dynamics Simulation Study of Network Public Opinion Evolution Mechanism

The factors that affect formation and dissemination of public opinion have been studied for a long time. However, the findings are disparate and fragmented, given the characteristics of netizens and new media in the Big Data era. To this end, this article introduces eight mechanisms working on formation and dissemination of public opinion on network. Based on system dynamics, this article further proposes a comprehensive causal relationship model to explore the factors affecting the consequence of public opinion on network. Particularly, the role of government is taken into consideration in this model. A simulation with Vensim PLE is conducted. The results of the simulation indicate that group polarization among netizens, opinion leaders, the quantity of media audience, the frequency of media report, government attention, and warning mechanism for public opinion crisis affect the consequence of public opinion on network significantly. Implications of the findings are discussed

Group Forming: Negotiating Design Via Web-Based Interaction and Collaboration

This research project proposed to create spatial and communal qualities of Group Form architecture via a web-based user participation design method. The proposed method allows multiple users to simultaneously design houses on the same site, encouraging spatio-temporal negotiation as users interact and collaborate with one another. In order to assess the feasibility of this approach, a prototype of a web-based Group Form design tool was implemented using the Processing environment. An experiment using the web-based tool was conducted with the objective of exploring the actual user behaviour