Be in the Mood: The Influence of Opinion Leaders on Netizens’ Emotions in Current Affairs and Political Events

To explore the influence of opinion leaders on netizens’ emotions, this paper puts forward suggestions for correctly guiding netizens’ emotions, effectively governing online public opinion and promoting the construction of government image. All the current political comment videos published by 15 Douyin opinion leaders are selected as the research samples, based on the videos published by opinion leaders and the netizens’ comments under the videos. Using voice sentiment analysis method and text sentiment analysis method, this paper measures the emotional tendency of opinion leaders and netizens’ emotions, and empirically analyzes the impact of the emotional tendency of opinion leaders’ current political comments on netizens’ emotions. The results show that the emotional tendency of opinion leaders has a significant inverted U-shaped impact on netizens’ emotions. With the change of opinion leaders’ emotions, netizens’ emotions first rise and then fall. In addition, the emotional tendency of opinion leaders has no impact on the emotional differences among netizen groups. This paper has positive theoretical and practical significance for netizens’ emotions and online public opinion governance in the era of digital governance.