# Applying the DEMATEL - ANP Fuzzy Comprehensive Model to Evaluate Public Opinion Events
## 3 Research Method  
### Calculate Indicator Weights Using the DEMATEL-ANP Model  
In some of the existing articles, the AHP used by researchers to determine the weights often ignores the interdependence between indicators. Although using ANP to determine \begin{table}
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**Principles** & **Description** \\ \hline Principle of profession & The screening and selection should be consistent with the research topic and should conform to the workflow of public opinion. Instead of being limited to a theoretical scope, the indicators should be able to be quantified and easy to obtain. \\ Principle of quantification & Conceptualized indicators are difficult to quantify when converted into data. Thus, the indicators screened should be quantified or able to be converted to quantified data. \\ Principle of correlation & The indicators should have internal connections to a certain extent to make sure the built index system is systematical. \\  & According to the existing research, scholars have constructed their public opinion index systems with different goals, resulting in a huge number of influencing factors and causing the problem of redundancy and overlapping, based on which, selected indicators should be precise and important. \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
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Table 1: Principles for constructing a public opinion evaluation index system. \begin{table}
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**The First Level** & **The Second Level** \\ \hline Degree of heat \(U_{1}\) & Number of issuances \(U_{11}\) \\  & Duration of concern \(U_{12}\) \\  & Number of clicks \(U_{21}\) \\ Degree of quantity \(U_{2}\) & Number of shares \(U_{22}\) \\  & Number of comments \(U_{23}\) \\ Degree of strength \(U_{3}\) & Number of opinion leaders \(U_{31}\) \\  & Network area distribution \(U_{32}\) \\  & Negative opinion holding rate \(U_{41}\) \\ Degree of focus \(U_{4}\) & Neutral opinion holding rate \(U_{42}\) \\  & Positive opinion holding rate \(U_{43}\) \\  & Click growth rate \(U_{51}\) \\ Degree of variation \(U_{5}\) & Share growth rate \(U_{52}\) \\  & Comment growth rate \(U_{53}\) \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
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Table 2: The index system of public opinion evaluation. the weights is more scientific, using the ANP alone may result in the problem of the relationship between indicators being highly ambiguous. Research using the DEMATEL-ANP model often obtains the weights individually and then derives their final mixed weights, which requires experts to repeat the evaluation of the same system twice, which does not take full advantage of the method. The DEMATEL can solve complex problems and sort out the relationships among various influencing factors [19]. The ANP method is used to normalize the matrix relationship generated by the influencing factors to test the weights among influencing factors [20]. Therefore, in this study, we used DEMATEL to enhance our understanding of the relationships between indicators whose purpose was to determine the causality of the influencing factors using the traditional DEMATEL method; at the same time, we used the ANP to calculate the weights of various aspects and influencing factors [19]. The DEMATEL is designed on a scoring scale of 0 to 4 (0: none; 1: very weak; 2: normal; 3: strong; 4: very strong), and 10 experts who have published papers in the field of communication and the study of public opinion were asked to score the importance of factors related to the dimensions in the questionnaire, from which the sum was used to analyze the degree of association between the indicators. The main procedures were as the follows. 1. Generate the direct relation matrix. 1. \(a_{ij}=\) impacting factor, in which \(a_{ij}\) stands for the degree of the impacting criteria. 2. Impact range = (0: none; 1: very weak; 2: normal; 3: strong; 4: very strong). 3. \(A= \begin{bmatrix}0&a_{1j}&a_{1n}\\ a_{11}&0&a_{in}\\ a_{n1}&a_{nj}&0\end{bmatrix} \), where \(a_{ij}\) denotes the average value. 4.