The Preliminary Study of "Stratosphere" on the Internet: A case study of same-sex marriage

• Main Authors: Wang, Shao-Wen, 王劭文
• Other Authors: Chen, Pai-Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/aab443

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 傳播學院傳播碩士學位學程 === 106 === "Stratosphere" has become a popular term on social network sites in recent years. This thesis focuses on the concept which "Stratosphere" refers to and on the related phenomena which are deemed important by the previous researchers. We presume that "Stratosphere" exists in every online community while different components of each community make their types different. This thesis defines the characteristics of "Stratosphere" by how media represent it and combine them with theories/concepts including virtual community, group think, and echo chamber effect. After that, we put forward four indicators to describe "Stratosphere", namely: member homogeneity, opinion consistency, community interactivity and information boundary. At the stage of data collection, we apply snowball sampling to gather Facebook fanpages which pay attention to the topic of same-sex marriage in Taiwan from March 1 to June 30, 2017. Then, we calculate the value of each indicator of each fanpage and divide them into five clusters which stand for five types of online community. In general, fanpages which support same-sex marriage get higher scores in member homogeneity, opinion consistency and community interactivity. It means that opposite opinions seldom appear in their discussion space. Fanpages which are against same-sex marriage have better performance in information boundary, meaning that they concentrate on sharing similar information. Further, this study divides fanpages into five clusters by the characteristics of “Stratosphere”. Fanpages of Cluster A rarely share information from the outside as their contents are mainly produced by themselves. Cluster B is characterized by the fact that different opinions frequently show up in their discussion space. People in Cluster C are more similar, share consistent opinions and interact frequently, showing that these fanpages provide the best space for empathy seeking. Fanpages of Cluster D have only a few users and are the marginal groups of this issue. Lastly, fanpages of Cluster E are the ones with numerous active users and many are important opinion leaders on the issue. In sum, this thesis is to make the concept of "Stratosphere" operable and focus on different orientations of "warmness". With a case study of same-sex marriage, researchers define four characteristics and five types of community of "Stratosphere". Furthermore, the indicators and features of the types in this study may help subsequent research understand how different kinds of user opinion distribute and the information flow on social network site.