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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 9, No. 5
Publication Date: May 25, 2022
DOI:10.14738/assrj.95.12436. Li, Y., Li, Y., Zhong, H., & Liang, R. (2022). Expression of Public Opinion and Sentiment of Online Gender Antagonism in China-- A
Case Study of Yang Li and her Talk Show. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(5). 317-329.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
Expression of Public Opinion and Sentiment of Online Gender
Antagonism in China-- A Case Study of Yang Li and her Talk Show
Yazheng Li
School of Journalism & Communication, Anhui University, Hefei, China
Yinghui Li
School of Journalism & Communication, Anhui University, Hefei, China
Huiqi Zhong
School of Journalism & Communication, Anhui University, Hefei, China
Ruihong Liang
School of Journalism & Communication, Anhui University, Hefei, China
ABSTRACT
In 2020, a Chinese stand-up comedy competition series ‘Rock & Roast’ went viral
because of gender issues. Yang Li, one of the comedians, labeled men as "ordinary
but confident men" by saying, "How can he be so average, yet so full of confidence?"
in the show. In a December episode, she talked about telling a male comedian her
new jokes. He replied that she was "testing men's limits." "Do men even have
limits?" Yang sarcastically asked, triggering a fresh wave of criticism. Yang Li
divides some common issues between men and women into gender, and his own
bias will naturally lead to debate. It seems men and women almost "fight" with each
other on the Internet. Because of this, this paper took Yang Li and her show as a
typical case, mining the review data on Sina Weibo employing various
methodological approaches, concluding the content analysis, word frequency
analysis, semantic network, and sentimental analysis. In this paper, we objectively
showed a trend of user attitude, distinguished different gender groups are negative
emotions, presented the evolution of public opinion of each period, and further
discussed the reasons for the formation of the "gender antithesis" event and the
underlying social problems.
Keywords: gender antagonism; review data analysis; characteristics of public opinion
INTRODUCTION
With the rapid development and popularity of social media, people can easily express their
opinions on the Internet. Controversial events in life tend to ferment into hot events after multi- level dissemination on the Internet. Group emotion may become emotional or even extreme in
mutual communication, resulting in group polarization. In the increasingly severe group
confrontation on the Internet, "gender confrontation" has always been an essential issue with
sharp attitudes, intense emotions, and broad influence.
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In 2020, a Chinese stand-up comedy competition series ‘Rock & Roast’ went viral because of
gender issues. Yang Li, one of the comedians, labeled men as "ordinary but confident men" by
saying, "How can he be so average, yet so full of confidence?" in the show. In a December
episode, she talked about telling a male comedian her new jokes. He replied that she was
"testing men's limits." "Do men even have limits?" Yang sarcastically asked, triggering a fresh
wave of criticism. As a talk show artist, Yang Li divides some common issues between men and
women into gender, and her own bias will naturally lead to debate. Such "agitation on women
issues" always generates a backlash; it has taken different forms since the beginning of the
twentieth century (Wu & Dong, 2019).
The debate about Yang Li developed from the initial collision of views to senseless censure and
emotional catharsis. The destructive emotions caused by it have permeated the whole network
and even extended to real life. So, this article mined reviews data on Sina Weibo (Twitter's
Chinese counterpart) as a sample, trying to conclude the evolution and characteristics of public
opinion. We hope to objectively show a trend of subject participants' attitudes and emotions,
distinguish different gender groups are negative emotions, present the viewpoint of each
gender, and further discuss the reasons for the formation of "gender opposition" events and the
underlying social problems. This paper also proposes positive guidance for online public
opinion on gender and other social issues. It is crucial to building a more rational, equal, and
harmonious online public opinion environment.
LITERATURE REVIEW
A review of feminism
Gender issues are not only important content in the field of communication but also a focus of
attention of the international community. The improvement of the economic level and the
emergence of new media platforms have increased the self-awareness of Chinese women. In
the summer of 2018, the women's rights movement "me too" began to respond on Weibo. Many
female KOLs and netizens exposed similar experiences in comments and retweets. The Weibo
platform became the primary position for Chinese women to speak out. When gender
communication is in the ascendant, social media platforms have seen much dissemination of
anomie and gender-conscious content, stereotypes, and emotional trafficking resulting in a
"post-truth" situation.
Gender issues are not only important content in the field of communication but also a focus of
attention of the international community. The improvement of the economic level and the
emergence of new media platforms have increased the self-awareness of Chinese women. In
the summer of 2018, the women's rights movement "me too" began to respond on Weibo. Many
female KOLs and netizens exposed similar experiences in comments and retweets. The Weibo
platform became the leading position for Chinese women to speak out. When gender
communication is in the ascendant, social media platforms, have seen a lot of dissemination of
anomie and gender-conscious content, stereotypes, and emotional trafficking resulting in a “
post-truth” situation (He & Wu, 2020).
Regarding the research on "gender issues," the achievements of scholars at home and abroad
mainly focus on gender presentation in the media, empirical discussion of women's media,
communicator analysis, audience analysis, actors analysis, theoretical debate and sorting, news
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Li, Y., Li, Y., Zhong, H., & Liang, R. (2022). Expression of Public Opinion and Sentiment of Online Gender Antagonism in China-- A Case Study of Yang
Li and her Talk Show. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(5). 317-329.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.95.12436
education and research on policies and regulations. Such studies are primarily qualitative
descriptions or use third-party data. Articles on feminist media studies were divided into three
categories: media stereotypes of women and socialization of images, ideological criticism, and
pornography studies (Zoonen, 1994). Gender and communication research mainly includes
media production, content, and reception in a review of media and gender studies in mainland
China (Chen, 2001). Actors were added as an analytical framework, referring to individuals and
organizations who try to improve communication through actions to adapt to the development
of women's movements or gender equality activities (Bu, 2006). These research results provide
valuable research experience for subsequent scholars. However, no scholars have conducted a
quantitative analysis of public opinion information on online "gender confrontation" events
and empirical research on the evolution of communication. This paper uses public opinion
analysis and sentiment analysis to study hot online events and combines data mining
technology, text analysis theory, and network information life-cycle theory, contributing to
enriching research methods and results on related topics.
Research on public opinion online
In the network public opinion analysis, the internal power of public opinion evolution depends
on the benefit mechanism of the network pusher (Wang & Ma, 2011). There is also a research
perspective that focuses on the micro-content of public opinion communication, which claims
that the evolution of online public opinion conforms to the law of the "Matthew Effect" and
"group polarization" (Liu & Cai, 2013). The research on comment text information mining
focuses on text classification, entity extraction, opinion mining, sentiment analysis, semantic
analysis, and other aspects Gao et al. (2016). Gao et al. (2013) summarized sentiment analysis
techniques, including machine learning and dictionary-based methods. Cong et al. (2021)
analyzed the influencing factors of tourists' perception of the destination image through
semantic network analysis and sentiment analysis of the review text.
Based on previous studies, this paper mainly uses the theory and technology of online public
opinion sentiment evolution to analyze the public opinion communication, evolution
mechanism, and guidance and control strategy of the "Yang Li Talk Show" event, which is
helpful to enrich the research examples of online public opinion sentiment evolution.
METHODS OF DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Main methods of analysis
This study took Yang Li and her show as a typical case, collecting the comment data on Weibo
(Twitter's Chinese counterpart), employing various methodological
approaches, concluding the content analysis, word frequency analysis, semantic network
analysis, and sentimental analysis.
Specific procedures are as follows: (1) Take Yang Li as a typical case and prepare the dataset
from the comment area of representatives on Sina Weibo. (2) Use the "Baidu Index"
(index.baidu.com) to analyze the evolution of public opinion of this hot event. (3) Analyze the
commenters and influential comments. (4) In word frequency analysis, the Chinese word
segmentation system NLPIR to segment comments, count word frequencies, and explore the
core concerns of different genders (Zhang & Shang, 2019). (5) Construct a co-word matrix
semantic network graph and analyze sentiment based on a sentiment dictionary in ROST-CM6
(Jiang & Pang, 2019). (6) Objectively summarize the attitudes and positions of various
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viewpoints in this incident, and put forward suggestions for dealing with such gender public
opinion incidents.
Data selection procedure
According to the report on the Development of Weibo Users in 2020, the monthly active users of
Weibo are 523 million. Weibo is the largest online social platform and the fermentation field of
online public opinions in China. During the two seasons of the Talk show, Sina Variety Show’s
official Weibo account released two representative microblogs:“杨笠吐槽直男盲目自信”(Yang
Li mocking straight Men are blindly Confident, on August 19, 2020), and “杨笠 以后只调侃成功
的男”(Yang Li said she just tease the successful men later, on August 17, 2021). Because it
describes the show objectively, comments under the two posts are authentic and
representative.
Data adjustment procedure
For this study, 4296 first-level comment data were obtained, including textual content of every
comment, posting time, likes, commenters' gender, location, number of followers, and
registration time on Weibo. Since the comments on Weibo are full of colloquial expressions and
meaningless reposts, expressions, hashtags, and pictures, influencing the understanding in the
Chinese context, it is necessary to conduct a text-revision of the dataset. Finally, a total of 3352
comments are obtained after adjustment.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Evolution analysis of public opinion
According to the characteristics of the "Yang Li Talk Show,” the study uses the "Baidu Index" to
analyze the evolution of public opinion. Baidu Index takes the search volume of netizens on
Baidu as the database, takes keywords as the statistical object, scientifically analyzes and
calculates the weight of the search frequency of each keyword in Baidu web search, and can
scientifically reflect the degree of Internet users' attention to keyword searches and continually
changing situation. By searching the keyword "Yang Li" from August 1, 2020, to the present
through the "Baidu Index,” we can get the public opinion dissemination periodicity of the "Yang
Li talk show" event in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Baidu Index search trend of keyword
The analysis of the event, combined with the information life cycle theory and the different
stages of network public opinion (Wang, 2010), divided the public opinion evolution cycle of
the "Yang Li Talk Show" event into the following four stages:
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Li, Y., Li, Y., Zhong, H., & Liang, R. (2022). Expression of Public Opinion and Sentiment of Online Gender Antagonism in China-- A Case Study of Yang
Li and her Talk Show. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(5). 317-329.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.95.12436
Formation stage: controversial discussions arouse fierce discussion among netizens
In August 2020, talk show actress Yang Li created a gender controversy by saying, "How can he
be so average, yet so full of confidence?" on Rock & Roast, which quickly went viral. Some people
see her as a representative of "women's rights,” while others see her as a representative of
stirring up gender antagonism. The event's popularity dropped below average after the Rock &
Roast season3 ended in November 2020.
Upsurge stage: the evolution from topic controversy to individual attack
In December 2020, Yang Li said, "Do men even have limits?" The controversy was further
expanded, triggering a "gender confrontation" war. With the popularity of feminist issues on
the Internet in the past two years, Yang Li's bold ridicule and "offensive" humor quickly gained
the support of a large number of female audiences. Coupled with the marketing discussion of
relevant media, Yang Li herself is a symbolic "feminist symbol" on the Internet. Controversy
attached to this issue followed. The content of the discussion shifted from the debate on the
feminist movement itself to the personal criticism of Yang Li. This criticism peaked in March
2021 when Intel officially announced Yang Li as a product spokesperson. In a promotional
video, Yang Li said, "Intel's vision is too high, even higher than my vision of picking boyfriends,"
and captioned, "How Yang Li rehabilitates workplace computers.” After many offended men
boycotted Yang's endorsement of Intel, women who supported Yang launched an Internet
movement about "Support Yang's endorsement" to counter male users who opposed Yang. The
incident reached its peak as the online debate between men and women continued to escalate.
Fluctuating stage: intermittent remarks make gender issues re-focused
As public opinion gradually gets weak, the topic seems to have been forgotten by netizens.
However, after the launch of Rock & Roast season4 in August 2021, Yang Li talked about gender
jokes again in her show, setting off another wave of discussions in cyberspace. It can be seen
that the debate on gender topics has not subsided, and occasional controversial remarks may
once again spark public opinion.
Dilution stage: the disappearance of controversial remarks reduces attention
With the end of the Rock & Roast season4, Yang Li herself and her controversial reviews
disappeared from the public area, making netizens' attention to the incident continue to
decline, and the online public opinion of the public opinion incident began to fade.
The analysis showed that the evolution cycle is longer than ordinary public opinion events,
reaching one year. 80% of the public opinion events last fewer than 30 days. When an online
"gender confrontation" event occurs, anyone involved should promptly respond rationally to
the controversial event and avoid emotional expression. Furthermore, there have been many
outbreaks of different degrees of online discussions in public opinion evolution. Each episode
was caused by Yang Li, who became a symbolic symbol of the "gender antagonism" discussion
in this event. Complex feministic assertions and gender issues were simplified to the judgment
of specific individuals.
Analysis of the commenters and influential comments
There are more female users of Weibo than males. Besides, there is also a rise in female rights
protection awareness, so women posted more comments than men, with 1,266 comments
made by male users, accounting for 37.8%, and 2,086 comments made by female users,
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accounting for 62.2%. In this incident, most commenters lived in central and eastern cities.
Most of these users have registered on Weibo for five years or more, and there are few new
Weibo users.
It is not difficult to find in Figure 2 that most of the commenters have been users of media
platforms for many years, familiar with cyberspace and the ecological environment of Weibo.
Most of the commenters lived in Chinese central and eastern cities, which are economically
developed, reflecting that gender issues are more concerned in the cities with higher levels of
economic development. There are more job opportunities for women in central and eastern
cities, and the awareness of fighting for equal rights has been better germinated and developed
in such cities. Women will empathize with the same situation, so they are more inclined to
express their opinions regarding women's rights and issues in cyberspace.
Figure 2. Geographical distribution of commenters
Comments with likes or replies that cause a certain degree of popularity in the general
comments are selected. This paper takes the number of followers as the abscissa and the
number of likes as the ordinate to obtain the heat map, as shown in Figure 3. The redder the
color, the more concentrated the comment users are in this area. No matter how many followers
there are, most comments have few likes, and ordinary users usually post a high-likes comment
with few followers. On the contrary, many opinion leaders with thousands or thousands of fans
can not necessarily guide the direction of comments. The voice of Weibo KOL (Key Opinion
Leader) in this event may not be widely concerned. Any insignificant statement may spread
widely on the Internet; KOL and ordinary netizens should regulate their reviews and behaviors
in cyberspace.
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Li, Y., Li, Y., Zhong, H., & Liang, R. (2022). Expression of Public Opinion and Sentiment of Online Gender Antagonism in China-- A Case Study of Yang
Li and her Talk Show. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(5). 317-329.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.95.12436
Figure 3. Heatmap of commenters
Word frequency analysis
NLPIR was selected to segment Chinese comment data into a single comprehensible word in
this study. The research mainly uses new word extraction, keyword extraction, batch word
segmentation, and word frequency statistics in NLPIR.
Table 1. High-frequency Words in the comments section (Top40)
General comments Men's comments Women's comments
Words Freque
ncy
Words Freque
ncy
Words Freque
ncy
men 732 men 342 men 390
women 531 women 268 Yang Li 275
Yang Li 414 Yang Li 139 women 255
self-confidence 217 ridicule 138 sister Li 139
ridicule 204 successful 105 self-confidence 127
sister Li 167 self-confidence 90 reality 106
successful 152 Talk Show 66 ridicule 66
Talk Show 121 gender
differentiation 66 very hilarious 64
real 112 Weibo 50 Talk Show 55
gender
differentiation 97 male chauvinist 40 male chauvinist 54
male chauvinist 94 ordinary but
confident men
39 teasing 49
teasing 75 jokes 33 successful 47
jokes 75 ordinary 31 exasperation 43
very hilarious 73 truth 29 jokes 42
ordinary but
confident 73 sister Li 28 friends 38
Weibo 71 web traffic 28 match himself 37
ordinary 67 opposition 27 ordinary 36
truth 58 feminism 26 ordinary but
confident men
34
match himself 57 wealth key 26 dear sister 32
cornered 52 teasing 26 world 30
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blind confidence 51 society 26 blindly confident 29
friends 49 show 25 truth 29
the elder sister 41 blind confidence 22 superb 25
superb 39 wish 21 Sister Yang 23
society 37 match himself 20 excellent 23
feminism 37 attack 18 kill mad 22
excellent 36 provoke 17 Weibo 21
wish 36 confident female 16 the comments section 18
opposition 36 ban 15 girlfriend 17
traffic 34 feminazi 15 boyfriend 16
show 33 gist 15 gender
differentiation 16
provoke 30 web traffic key 15 gender antagonism 15
wealth password 30 boxing 15 laughable 15
sister Yang 29 superb 14 severe 14
attack 29 reality 14 come on 13
gist 27 China 13 provoke 13
severe 26 hot search 13 boyfriend 12
laughable 26 offense 13 Li Li 12
China 25 fall in love 12 China 12
it slaps 23 ordinary people 12 successful man 12
Comparative analysis shows that the top words are "male,” "female,” "Yang Li,” "confident,”
“successful,” and "ordinary.” These words are the "source words" of the event, which are the
content of the talk show video itself and the core focus of divergent discussion in the comments
section. By observing the high-frequency words in comments of different genders, it can also
be found that some male users can objectively view the artistic effects of talk shows, believing
that such displays are suspected of provoking gender confrontation and earning traffic wealth.
Some male users think that the program’s content is offensive to the male group, and there is
also the existence of "ordinary but confident, “and such program artists should be banned.
The frequent occurrence of "feminism" (Nü Quan), "feminazi" (Nü Quan), and "boxing" (Da- Quan) from male comments indicates that men ware of the equal power of women fighting for
gender equality. However, they regard feminists as feminazi, "feminism" has become a dirty
word in popular discourse and has been stigmatized on Chinese media platforms. Some female
users called Yang Li "sister Li" (Li-Jie), "dear sister" (Jie-Jie), "sister Yang" (Yang-Jie), and "Li Li,”
believing what Yang Li shows on Rock and Roast is sharp and consistent with their own
experiences. Although the talk show artists have some artistic processing for effect during
performing, the result is worth-thinking. Chinese contemporary women face far more problems
than the show presented. Some women think the comedy effect of the performance is good.
They regard it as a humorous "joke,” "very hilarious" (Xiao Si), and "laughable" (Hao Xiao)
appears many times. Other women called men "male chauvinists" (Zhi Nan) and " confident
men" (Pu Xin Nü), believing that men were trying to hide what they were, and emotional
comments were mixed in such comments. At the same time, a small number of women can
objectively and calmly make comments, considering that the show is provoking gender
confrontation. The difference in the way of thinking between men and women can be seen in
the difference in the positions of men and women. However, no matter whether it is male or
female, the evaluation of Yang Li is not one-sided. To a certain extent, both men and women
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Li, Y., Li, Y., Zhong, H., & Liang, R. (2022). Expression of Public Opinion and Sentiment of Online Gender Antagonism in China-- A Case Study of Yang
Li and her Talk Show. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(5). 317-329.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.95.12436
have calmly thought about whether there is capital involved in the event to obtain traffic
income. Both have seen the opposite and feminist attributes of the event.
Semantic network analysis
Semantic analysis is a philosophical method to analyze the meaning of language. With the
development of natural language processing technology, more and more technical tools are
applied to semantic analysis. The semantic network graph usually presents a three-circle
structure of "core-sub core-periphery" (Liu et al., 2020), node size represents the frequency of
occurrence of keywords, and the thickness of the line between two nodes represents the
number of co-occurrences of two keywords (Mo & Zhang, 2021). In this study, ROST CM
software was used for semantic network analysis. Firstly, the co-word matrix of the total
comments was constructed. Then the results were imported into Gephi for optimization to
obtain the semantic network diagram of the full comments (see Figure 4).
Figure 4. Semantic network diagram of total comments
In the core circle are the key discussion points of the event, such as "male,” "opposition,” "self- confidence,” and "Yang Li.” The sub-core circle mainly centers on the content of the program
itself and diverges slightly, such as "ordinary but confident men,” "provoke,” "traffic,” "ceiling,”
"society," and "contradiction.” Compared with the words in the core circle, these words have a
more personalized extension and centrally represent the attitudes and opinions of reviewers.
To guide the development of public opinion correctly in gender opposition public opinion
events, it is necessary to start with such focus words to carry out a more rational and in-depth
exploration and evaluation. The terms contained in the outer circle are more closely linked to
the commenter's real life, from which we can see the corresponding parts of the real social
concerns related to the event of Yang Li's talk show, such as "friends,” "children,” "anger,”
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"wealth,”"program" and "actors.” Therefore, to reduce gender antagonism in real-life situations
and cyberspace, it is crucial to make macro supervision and guidance focusing on the core
discussion points of the event itself first. Then explore the attitudes and views extended by the
public. Decisions should be made based on the nature of the issue to promote a more
harmonious and beautiful cyberspace and social governance.
Sentimental analysis
Online comment data usually have an emotional tendency. By analyzing the sentiment of Weibo
comments, we can understand netizens' attitudes, views, and opinions on the event. This paper
uses ROST EA software to analyze the overall emotional tendency and male and the female
emotional tendency of the comments extracted from Weibo. We use two measurement methods
of "emotion type" and "emotion polarity and intensity" for quantitative analysis works. The
emotional value of each comment text is calculated based on the emotion dictionary, and the
emotional tendency of the text is judged accordingly. Finally, the emotion type is divided into
three categories: positive emotion, neutral emotion, and negative emotion, and the emotional
intensity is divided into three categories: ordinary, moderate, and high emotion. The analysis
results are shown in Figure 5 and Table 2.
Sentiment type analysis
As shown in Figure 6, Weibo netizens' emotional cognition of the “Li Yang Talk Show” event
shows a trend of polarization. Both negative and positive emotions account for a high
proportion, and the negative emotional comments are slightly higher than the positive ones.
Specifically, there were 1,929 negative comments, accounting for 57.55%; 1383 positive
emotion comments, accounting for 41.26%; 40 neutral comments, accounting for 1.19%. The
statistical results show significant differences in netizens' attitudes towards this event. The
comments are filled with emotional expressions with obvious emotional tendencies, and the
negative emotions are slightly dominant.
Figure 5. Statistical results of sentiment analysis
Through the comparative analysis of the data on male and female emotional tendencies,
positive emotion among females (45.88%) is higher than positive emotion among males
41.26%
1.19%
57.55%
45.88%
1.10%
53.02%
33.65%
1.34%
65.01%
0.00%
10.00%
20.00%
30.00%
40.00%
50.00%
60.00%
70.00%
Positive Neutral Negtive
General comments women's comments men's comments
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Li, Y., Li, Y., Zhong, H., & Liang, R. (2022). Expression of Public Opinion and Sentiment of Online Gender Antagonism in China-- A Case Study of Yang
Li and her Talk Show. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(5). 317-329.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.95.12436
(33.65%), negative emotion among females (52.02%) is lower than negative emotion among
males (65.01%). The positive emotional comments of female netizens are mainly to express
their support for Yang Li and his opinions, such as " Li Yang is the best. "and " ridicule is too
appropriate !! ", "I like this part. It is clear what everyone knows." Female netizens' negative
emotional comments present mainly on mocking men, such as "unsuccessful and incompetent
men will hate people everywhere on the Internet." "Men are a more or less chauvinistic, not blindly
confident person but an inborn poser."
In contrast, the emotional tendency of male netizens is dominated by negative emotions, among
which there are three main views. One is that Li Yang stigmatizes the word "average but
confident" for example, "average but confident was originally a word of encouragement, but now
it has become a strange word. Ordinary people do not deserve confidence, and they should be
deprived and degraded. " The other is that Li Yang sensationalized gender issues and provoked
gender confrontation. For example, "To sensationalize eyeballs and attract attention, she
deliberately provoked gender conflict between men and women.", "Wealth key is equal to gender
confrontation.", and “what is it if it is not engaging in gender confrontation? All I know is this
stupid topic." The third is the attack on Yang Li and women, such as "why no one makes fun of
women's blindly confidence,” "how did she fight (regard feminism as feminazi),” and "the same as
women, it shows that women are hysterical and unreasonable." Of course, some people support
Yang Li in the comments of male netizens, such as "I feel it very good to be said in the call names
what quarrel with people on the Internet you correct yourself straight, you will find no matter
communicate with male or female will be more comfortable.", "It is too right, as a man even feel
there are too many chauvinistic men."
It can be seen from the above analysis that in the event of the "Yang Li Talk Show,” most of the
men, as the teased party, were opposed to Li Yang's views, and the comments showed strong
negative emotions and aggressiveness. Since most female netizens supported Li Yang's ideas,
some women's anger and traditional patriarchal thoughts had a fierce confrontation with the
negative comments of male netizens, resulting in an extreme situation of entangling.
Sentimental polarity and intensity analysis
According to the segmented statistics of the emotional tendency (See Table 2), the two parts of
the male and female texts are nearly neutral. That is to say, the positive and negative emotions
of the average degree account for the highest proportion. This result indicates that although
netizens' comments have an apparent emotional tendency in this event, most comments have
low emotional intensity.
In addition, the difference between the three intensity values of positive emotion is slight, the
average degree of negative emotion is dominant, and the proportion of moderate and high is
tiny. It can be seen that extreme negative emotions are the attitude of the minority, while highly
emotional remarks are highly provocative, such as "How frenzied, how hysterical, unreasonable,
in simple terms, is the same as women, so women = frenzied, hysterical, unreasonable.", "The
astonishing narrow-mindedness of so many men, who cannot accept even a single joke, how
retarded, ignorant, bossy, and insane are they?", "Engaging in these nasty things all day long to
cheat traffic has been relying on gender discrimination for years to make money. China has been
kidnapped by vulgar traffic and has no hope."
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Table 2. Statistical results of sentiment analysis in sections
Sentiment segment General Women Men
Positive
General (5, 15] 22.79% 25.02% 19.12%
Medium (15, 25] 10.29% 11.36% 8.53%
Height (25 + up) 8.17% 9.49% 6.00%
Negative
General (15, 5) 52.18% 48.70% 57.90%
Moderate [25, 15) 3.28% 2.59% 4.42%
Height (- up to 25) 2.09% 1.73% 2.69%
Online discussions of "gender conflict" events are rife with emotional expressions. These highly
emotional statements catalyze gender confrontation and continue to intensify gender conflicts.
In a post-truth time, emotionally-charged comments are more likely to spread, and rational
voices will be drowned out in a spiral of silence. Therefore, every individual who speaks on the
Internet should focus on self-restraint. They should not only learn to distinguish between
online rumors and extreme remarks but also keep objective and calm in the face of fierce group
emotions. They should restrain themselves and avoid spreading information that hurts others
and intensifies conflicts. At the same time, as a hotbed of public opinion fermentation, social
media should strengthen self-regulation, intervene in the solidification of radical ideas on the
platform, adjust the operation mechanism that only puts traffic first, and give practical guidance
to events with significant social influence.
CONCLUSION
A public opinion crisis is a social structure and state, and the public sees social contradictions
in some apparent events. Today's media divert certain social governance functions. They play
the role of propaganda and social mobilization and generate social cohesion through
themselves. However, the companies behind the media are generally "technology-neutral.”
They have web-traffic preferences and may acquiesce or even indulge in some behaviors that
negatively impact society, making the situation develop in an uncontrollable direction.
At the level of public discussion, some discussions in the "gender confrontation" incident have
specific progressive significance. It represents the awakening of women's minds. Women
defend their rights through unremitting efforts; it also means the possibility of multiple
discussions in the Internet public opinion environment. The collision of different viewpoints is
conducive to bringing new thinking. This is conducive to further arousing society's attention to
gender issues to promote the development of gender relations in a more equal and rational
direction. However, the fierce "gender confrontation" in the current Internet public opinion
environment will only lead to the shrinking of public discussion space and the deterioration of
public sentiment.
As a talk-show artist, Yang Li divides some common issues between men and women into
gender, and his own bias will naturally lead to debate. Maybe it is because the actual actions of
gender equality in real life are not outstanding in China. Therefore, men have a slightly wait- and-see mockery of the feminist attributes in the Weibo Yang Li talk show incident. In the
ecological environment of Weibo public opinion, the main contributors to comment data are
young women. Women are more likely to make emotional remarks, and their attitudes and
voices deserve attention compared to men. Because of this "emotional echo chamber" on the
Page 13 of 13
329
Li, Y., Li, Y., Zhong, H., & Liang, R. (2022). Expression of Public Opinion and Sentiment of Online Gender Antagonism in China-- A Case Study of Yang
Li and her Talk Show. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(5). 317-329.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.95.12436
Internet, we should focus on solving the emotional problems of netizens rather than using
arrogant means to make public opinion disappear.
It needs to be clear that "gender opposition" is a problem that is difficult to solve fundamentally.
There are complex reasons behind it. The chronic diseases left over from the history of human
development have been magnified unprecedentedly in the Internet age. The representative
"Yang Li" presents many new cognitive perspectives on disseminating public opinion on the
Internet. From the standpoint of communication, we should provide a rational online
discussion space as much as possible so that those objective viewpoints can be circulated and
disseminated. We need to evoke genuine humanistic care and promote online public opinion to
continuously move closer to a proper state of harmony and equality.
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