Exploring the Impact of the Presentation of Negative Information in

the News on Public Sentiment

Xinye Xie

Zhejiang Taizhou High School, 317000 Zhejiang, China

Keywords: Social Media, Negative Information, Public Sentiment.

Abstract: The rapid development of social media plays an important role in shaping public sentiment. At the same time,

there is a phenomenon of "negative bias" in psychology, which indicates that even when the stimulus intensity

is the same, negative things have a greater impact on a person's psychological state and psychological process

compared with neutral or positive things, which also indicates that negative information is more likely to

influence public mood from another perspective. The theme of this study is to investigate the influence of the

presentation form of negative information on public sentiment. The data for the study were obtained from

microblogs and some public social platforms. In the process of the study, the data were screened with the help

of analytical tools, and the intensity of emotions in public comments was analyzed through text analysis

methods, to compare and analyze the impact of different forms of presentation of negative information on

public emotions. The results of this study show that compared with the information presented in plain text,

the reaction of netizens is more intense and the public's emotional intensity is higher when the information is

presented in the form of video text. Therefore, the study concluded that presenting information in the form of

video text has a greater impact on public sentiment than presenting information in the form of plain text.

Therefore, it is recommended to use a text-only format when publishing social news to reduce negative public

emotions to a certain extent.

1 INTRODUCTION

The rapid development of social media plays an

important role in shaping public sentiment. The

improvement of intelligent and personalized service

levels of online social platforms provides a broad

platform for the public to communicate and discuss

public policies (Hu 2023). The main body of

communication on online social platforms tends to be

socialized, which also indicates that every citizen

from official authority, and self-media to every

citizen can be the publisher and receiver of

information (Wang 2023). The cross-propagation of

information in different circles results in the stacking

of the information itself as well as the recipients of

the information, and the information network

becomes more complex, which continues to build up

the power for the influence of public policy

communication (Long 2023). In psychology, there is

the phenomenon of "negative bias", which indicates

that when the stimulus intensity is the same,

compared with neutral or positive things, negative

things have a greater impact on a person's

psychological state of mind, which also indicates that

negative information is more likely to affect public

sentiment, causing anxiety and panic among the

masses.

The research value and significance of this paper

are to analyze the impact of different forms of

presentation of negative information on social media

on public sentiment, to provide ideas for improving

and perfecting the mechanism of presenting and

pushing information, to alleviate the group anxiety

brought by negative information, to better channel

public sentiment, and to maintain social stability. This

study focuses on exploring the effects of different

presentation forms of negative information on public

emotions. In terms of research methodology, the

specific research method of this study is to screen the

comments of the most representative emotions with

the help of analytical tools under different forms of

presentation of an event, and then further analyze the

emotional intensity of the emotions using relevant

text analysis methods, to compare the different forms

of presenting information, such as video and text

combined with the presentation of information or

Xie, X.

Exploring the Impact of the Presentation of Negative Information in the News on Public Sentiment.

DOI: 10.5220/0012866700004547

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Data Science and Engineering (ICDSE 2024), pages 377-381

ISBN: 978-989-758-690-3

377

pure text presentation, to explore the extent of

influence of the different forms of presenting

information on public emotions. emotion. The

ultimate goal of this study is to explore the impact of

different forms of information presentation on public

sentiment, and to provide ideas for improving the

information presentation and pushing mechanism.

2 THEORETICAL FOUNDATION

Many news reports in the new media era are presented

to the public in diversified ways, and no matter what

form they take, they need the support of a news frame.

News frame refers to the organizational structure and

overall design of news works. Network media use

news frames to present the causes and consequences

of events, highlight the specific connotations of the

report, and use them to express their positions and

attitudes. The choice of news frames is based on the

editor's insights after perceiving things, and news

frames are not only designed to highlight a certain

aspect of a news story, but also to maximize the effect

of news dissemination, and the emotional impact on

the audience in the process of dissemination is the

main aspect of this paper's inquiry. Given this theory,

this paper compiles the existing related literature and

explores the current research status.

In terms of the impact of the dissemination of

negative information, some scholars have studied the

development of the new media era, as well as the

impact of negative information reports on society and

the dissemination channels in the new media era.

They put forward measures to promote the new media

to make the negative information play a positive role

in the social life (Zhang and Liu 2024). However, the

impact of negative information on public sentiment

and the impact caused by the presentation form of

negative information is not involved in these aspects,

this paper will explore the impact of the presentation

form of negative information on public sentiment to

supplement the existing research gaps. There is also

some existing research that examines what favorable

and unfavorable effects the social information

environment shaped by network media has on public

social cognition (Li 2013). However, not much has

been done on the impact of negative information on

public sentiment and the impact of the presentation of

negative information, and this paper will explore the

impact of the presentation of negative information on

public sentiment.

In terms of news reporting, an article analyzes the

narrative characteristics, language organization

strategies, and frameworks of domestic violence

online news. It summarizes the narrative presentation

and gender bias in this type of news (Liu 2020).

However, not much has been covered about the

presentation form of this type of case, and this paper

will start with the different presentation forms of

negative information to supplement this part of the

content. A scholar studied the impact of negative

information and the benefits and countermeasures of

guiding students to objectively recognize negative

social information (Shang 2023). However, not much

has been said about the form of negative information

and its impact on public sentiment, and this paper will

explore the impact of the form of negative

information on public sentiment to supplement the

existing research gaps.

Many scholars have studied the hot topics on

social media platforms and the public's emotions

towards the information presented, for example, some

scholars studied the emotional state and evolution

trend characteristics of users on the microblogging

platform during the implementation of the "Double

Reduction" policy using a machine learning model

(Zhang 2024). "Double Reduction" policy through

machine learning modeling to study the emotional

state and evolutionary trend of users on the

microblogging platform during the implementation of

the policy, but not much has been covered in terms of

the impact of different forms of information

presentation on public sentiment (Zhang 2024).

Another scholar explored the emotional

characteristics and evolutionary laws of public

opinion reversal events with the help of the LSTM

training model, CLIWC thesaurus, and other tools in

his article (Fang 2023). A scholar used QCA analysis

techniques to study the influencing factors,

mechanisms, and channeling of online social

emotions in hotspot public events her article (Zhu

2023). Other scholars compared the impact of two

events of a similar nature but with different modes of

releasing government information on online public

sentiment based on the OCC Affective Cognition

Model (Zhang and Zhou 2013). However, the

research on the impact of different forms of social

information presentation on public sentiment is not

comprehensive. A scholar studied the impact of the

post-truth era on the dissemination of public opinion

and public emotional expression and innovated the

methodology and strategy of guiding public

emotional expression by mass media. However, not

much has been said about the influence of different

forms of information presentation on public

emotional expression (Huang 2016).

As seen from the above existing literature, some

scholars have explored the impact of the narrative

ICDSE 2024 - International Conference on Data Science and Engineering

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features, language organization strategies, and

specific era characteristics of negative information on

public sentiment, as well as the impact of negative

information on the social life of the public's social

cognition, etc. Still, not much has been said about the

impact of different forms of presentation of negative

information on public sentiment, so this paper will

start with the different forms of presentation of

information to study its impact on public sentiment.

This paper will start from the different forms of

information presentation to study its impact on public

sentiment, supplementing the existing research gaps.

In addition, the current research status, most of which

is based on machine learning, and regression

algorithms for research, for the text of the emotional

aspects of the research is less, this paper is based on

the status of this research, the combination of

artificial intelligence and text analysis, in the different

forms of presentation of the two types of information,

respectively, on the social media comment area of the

user's comments on the random capture, the use of

artificial intelligence software to analyze the

comments of the initial screening, and get the most

representative emotions of the event. The comments

of the most representative emotions of the event are

obtained, and then these comments are analyzed

emotionally, starting from the frequency of extreme

words, strong emotional words, and other words

related to emotional expression, as well as the

correlation between the use of punctuation and the

expression of emotions, to analyze the emotional

intensity of the emotion, to effectively compare and

analyze the degree of influence of the different forms

of presentation of the negative information on the

public mood.

3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Case Background

In the past few years, wife-killing cases have

appeared in the public's view, such as the case of a

pregnant woman falling off a cliff in Thailand, the

case of wife-killing in Hangzhou, the case of wife-

killing and hiding a corpse in Shanghai, etc. To a

certain extent, these bad crimes have caused many

netizens to be angry and panicked, and so on. Internet

news research on "wife murder" cases generally

adopts the methods of case analysis, word frequency

analysis, questionnaire survey, narrative research,

frame analysis, and so on. Framing theory, narrative

research, and discourse analysis are the most common

methods. By analyzing the frames of the reported text

and mining the discursive information therein, it can

understand how the public perceives the case.

According to Berg, discourse analysis has the

advantage of presenting a complete picture of social

phenomena over a long period, and it is the most

effective research method when intending to portray

the image of women in the media over some time, or

even across centuries. In addition, with the help of

discourse analysis, the implicit and explicit contents

of news reports can be explored at the same time,

which reduces the cost of research. Therefore, for a

study on the news coverage of the "wife-killing" case,

if the sample size is large, the period is long, and the

degree of diversity of the reported text is high, then

the combination of news discourse analysis based on

framing theory and narrative research is a reliable

research method.

For the case of Hangzhou wife murder, many

official media have reported on it, and the form of the

report is mostly presented in a combination of

pictures and text and a combination of video and text.

According to reports, in the early morning of July 5,

2020, the suspect Xu Guoli due to emotional,

economic, trivial, and other family life conflicts, in

Hangzhou City, Jianggan District, Sanbao Beiyuan

home, while his wife Moumou was asleep when he

killed her, and in the bathroom will be dismembered

after the body dispersed and abandoned, and part of

the body tissues through the toilet flushed into the

septic tank. July 30, Hangzhou Municipal Public

Security Bureau suspected intentional homicide to

submit to the approval of the arrest of suspects the

suspect Xu Guoli, meanwhile, after reviewing that the

suspect Xu Guoli's crime is cruel and of a bad nature,

has been suspected of intentional homicide, decided

to approve his arrest on August 6th. The report came

out, caused extensive discussion in the comments

section, and to a certain extent provoked public anger,

and even some netizens in the comments section to

use more intense language to express their emotions.

3.2 Research Process

Based on the representative news cases covered in the

above text, the extent of the impact of different forms

of information presentation on public sentiment is

explored. By analyzing the comment section of the

wife-killing case, this paper randomly selected 200

comments, which were all from People's Daily and

China News Network. Using the analysis tool to

screen these comments, mainly screening the news

comments of video-text combined presentation of

information and the comments of pure textual news

presentation and screening the 10 most representative

Exploring the Impact of the Presentation of Negative Information in the News on Public Sentiment

379

emotional comments among the comments presented

in each of the two situations.

To analyze the intensity of the sentiment text

analysis method was used. First, a sentiment analysis

tool was used to determine the sentiment category of

each comment, such as positive, negative, or neutral.

Then, a sentiment intensity analysis method was used

to assess each sentiment category's intensity level. In

this way, the sentiment intensity of each comment

was obtained and the most representative sentiment

comments were selected from them.

By comparing different forms of information

presentation it is possible to assess the extent to which

they affect public sentiment. First, consider a form of

presenting information using a combination of video

and text. This approach allows for a more vivid

message to be conveyed through a combination of

audio, video, and text. The comments in this

presentation format were analyzed and 10 of the most

representative sentiment comments were selected. In

this case, the most representative emotion was

"anger" in both video-text and text-only formats. In

the video-text posts, the comments expressing anger

were more aggressive, with more extreme words,

words expressing strong emotions, and more frequent

use of punctuation marks such as exclamation points

to reflect emotions.

After that explore the way of presenting news with

information in text-only form. This approach relies

solely on text to convey information and may be

plainer and direct compared to the video-text

combination. Again the comments under this form of

presentation were analyzed and 10 of the comments

expressing emotions were selected. The comments

expressing anger are more conservative under the

posts presented in plain text form. Therefore, it can

be tentatively concluded that compared to presenting

information in plain text form, under the form of

presenting information in video text, netizens reacted

more intensely to their anger, and the emotional

intensity of anger as an emotion was greater, with a

greater degree of influence on public sentiment.

3.3 Limitations Analysis

Most of the current research status is based on

machine learning, regression algorithms for research,

and less research on the emotional aspects of the text,

this paper is based on this research status, combining

artificial intelligence and text analysis, randomly

capturing the user comments in the social media

comment area, analyzing them using artificial

intelligence software, and initially filtering the

comments, and the data obtained. Then the

representative comments are sentiment analyzed,

starting from the emotional vocabulary to analyze the

degree of emotion. This research method has some

limitations. First, the selection of samples is limited

to the comment section of this particular case and

cannot represent the emotional response of the whole

society. Second, there may be some subjective factors

in the sentiment analysis and emotion intensity

assessment method itself. Therefore, it is

recommended that future research be conducted in a

broader context, considering more cases and different

forms of presentation. In addition, qualitative

research methods can be combined to gain a deeper

understanding of the public's reactions and

psychological mechanisms to different forms of

information presentation.

4 DISCUSSION

The results of this study are that in the form of

presenting information in video text, compared to

presenting information in text-only form, netizens

reacted more intensely to anger, the emotional

intensity of the emotion of anger was greater, and the

degree of influence on public sentiment was greater.

The reason for this result may be the different

characteristics of text and video. First of all, text is an

abstract symbol, that needs to be read and understood,

and has a certain degree of abstraction, while video is

more figurative than text, which is a concrete and

graphic medium that can directly present events,

scenes, and characters; secondly, video is more vivid

than text and has a stronger impact on the audiovisual

experience, which conveys the information through

images and moving images, and at the same time is

accompanied by commentary, sound effects and other

auditory rendering, which makes it more effective to

convey the information. Video conveys information

through images and moving images, accompanied by

narration, sound effects, and other auditory rendering,

bringing visual and auditory double stimulation, these

vivid audio-visual effects with impact can attract the

attention of the audience, and can directly stimulate

the audience's senses, resulting in a stronger

emotional response. In contrast, the text needs readers

to understand through the imagination, the emotional

experience is relatively weak; in addition, the video

situation reproduction is more realistic, can

realistically reproduce the events, scenes, and

characters, stimulate the audience's visual, auditory,

tactile and other sensory experiences, so that the

audience has a stronger perception and experience, so

that they feel as if they were in the realm of the real

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emotional experience, and further drive the

audience's emotions. Although text can create a

situation through description, it cannot achieve the

realism and immersion of video; at the same time,

video is richer in emotional expression, and the

emotional expression in video is more diversified,

and it can be conveyed through filming techniques,

editing skills, soundtracks, and other ways. These

elements work together to create a richer emotional

effect. Finally, the video is more interactive, the video

can be shared and disseminated through various

social media platforms, and the audience can watch

while commenting, interacting, and sharing, thus

triggering a wider range of emotional resonance.

Although text can also be interactive, video is more

interactive and can drive public sentiment more

broadly. By analyzing the sentiment of these

comments and assessing their emotional intensity, it

will be able to compare the impact of different forms

of information presentation on public sentiment. The

results of this study may reveal how public emotional

responses to particular events or topics are affected

by different forms of information presentation.

Further understanding of this will help better

understand the impact of information dissemination

on social emotions and provide relevant references

and guidance for media, platforms, and policymakers.

5 CONCLUSION

The result of this study is that in this case, the most

representative emotion is "anger" in both the video-

text and text-only formats. In the post with video text,

the comments expressing anger were more

aggressive, with more extreme words, words

expressing strong emotions, and more frequent use of

punctuation marks such as exclamation points to

reflect the intensity of the emotion; however, in the

post with text-only information, the comments

expressing anger were more conservative, which

further leads to the conclusion that compared to the

post with text-only information, in the post with text-

only information, in the post with video text, the most

representative emotion was "anger". The study

concludes that in the form of presenting information

in video text, netizens reacted more intensely to

anger, and the emotional intensity of the emotion of

anger was greater, i.e., in the form of presenting

information in video text the extent of the impact on

public sentiment was greater. This study provides a

lot of valuable references for future research in this

direction, which can provide certain ideas for further

exploring the connection between information and

public emotions and how to better channel public

emotions using this connection, for example, future

research can further explore the influence of

information pushing and information presentation

mechanisms on public emotions based on this study.

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