“The Controversy over a Teacher’s First Escape in the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake”: Exploring Folk-mentality Reflected via the Internet

This study extracted the netizen’s comments about Meizhong Fan’s case by using the method of systematic sampling on the Homepage of MSN China. It employed a method of content analysis to explore the folk-mentality reflected via the Internet. The study shows that both the affirmative and the negative netizens don’t have significant differences in the comment dates. Both of them tend to report comments at the weekend. But, both the affirmative and the negative netizens have significant differences in the comment time. The affirmative netizens are significantly more than the negative netizens in browsing the Internet in the daytime, and at night the negative netizens are significantly more than the affirmative netizens in browsing the Internet. Both the affirmative and the negative netizens have significant differences in dialectical dimension, and the affirmative netizens are tend to be dialectical. Both the affirmative and the negative messages have significant differences between emotional / rational dimensions, between the forgivable / unforgivable dimensions and also between the aggressive / unaggressive dimensions. The folk-mentality of netizens to the Meizhong Fan case tends to be emotional, unforgivable and aggressive.