Research on online public opinion dissemination and emergency countermeasures of food safety in universities-take the rat head and duck neck incident in China as an example

Jinsi Liu; Su Wang; Zhihua Wang; Shixiang Chen

doi:10.3389/fpubh.2023.1346577

Research on online public opinion dissemination and emergency countermeasures of food safety in universities-take the rat head and duck neck incident in China as an example

Front Public Health. 2024 Feb 1:11:1346577. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1346577. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Jinsi Liu^#^{1

2}, Su Wang^#^{1

2}, Zhihua Wang³, Shixiang Chen^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ School of Politics and Public Administration, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.
² Local Government Public Service Innovation Research Center, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.
³ College of Public Administration, South-Central Minzu University, Wuhan, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

In recent years, food safety accidents have occurred frequently in colleges and universities, and students are prone to emotional resonance with food safety. It triggered heated discussions among the whole society and gradually formed a unique online public opinion on food safety in universities. After food safety incidents broke out in universities, some universities deliberately avoided responsibility or made mistakes in handling the incidents, which will create greater risks of online public opinion. Therefore, this paper takes the "Rat Head and Duck Neck" incident at Jiangxi Institute of Technology in China as an example. The purpose is to study the dissemination of public opinion on food safety online in universities and propose emergency countermeasures. Above all, the food safety online public opinion is divided into five stages: incubation period, burst period, spreading period, recurring period and dissipation period. Then, methods such as text mining and cluster analysis were used to deeply analyze the influencing factors at each stage of the development of food safety online public opinion. And analyze the role of different subjects in the development of public opinion based on the perspective of stakeholders. Finally, this paper provides corresponding countermeasures for different stages of online public opinion on food safety in universities, which provides suggestions and references for university governance. This study found that: (1) The resonance effect of online public opinion media on food safety in universities is significant. (2) Public opinion on food safety in universities is repetitive. (3) Improper response to food safety incidents in universities can easily trigger negative secondary public opinion.

Keywords: emergency measures; life cycle theory; online public opinion; rat head duck neck; university food safety.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animals
Ducks*
Food Safety
Humans
Public Opinion*
Rats
Students
Universities

Associated data

figshare/10.6084/m9.figshare.24638799.v2

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported partly by the Hubei University Provincial Teaching Research Project “Innovation Research on the Compound Talent Training Model of China’s Administrative Management Disciplines under the Threshold of New liberal arts construction” (Project No. 2022014), and “Research on the Optimization of the Management Standardization System of the Hubei Provincial Government” commissioned by the Standardization Department of Hubei Provincial Market Supervision Bureau (Project No. 1203/250000471).