A Study on the Regulatory Game of University Online Public Opinion Supervision from the Perspective of Media Convergence Based on the Herd Effect

In the era of integrated media, negative events in universities are easily provoked by online public opinion. In addition to supervising the behavior of online media, actively guiding public opinion by universities is crucial to controlling the public opinion environment. In this context, this study describes university public opinion events as a game between mainstream media, ordinary media, and regulatory authorities. Different from previous research, this article considers the impact of herd behavior on the decision-making of participants and establishes an evolutionary game model. By solving the model, we obtain evolutionary stable strategies and further analyze the influence of related parameters on the evolutionary stable state. The results show that the optimal choices for mainstream media and ordinary media are objective dissemination, while the optimal choice for regulatory authorities is relaxed supervision. Regulatory authorities' reward and punishment systems for online media are directly related to their decisions. Ordinary media and mainstream media are prone to making the same decision due to herd behavior. Regulatory costs and loss of utilities greatly affect the decision-making of regulatory authorities. Finally, through a case simulation, a "Prevention, Intervention, and Aftercare" regulatory model is proposed, providing suggestions for university regulatory departments to govern online public opinion.