# Applying the DEMATEL - ANP Fuzzy Comprehensive Model to Evaluate Public Opinion Events
## 5 Conclusions  
Public opinion is the most direct way to understand the influence of events, as people can gather online to share information, knowledge, and opinions. Therefore, it is necessary to predict and evaluate the urgency of public opinion events.  
In this study, the index system indicator weights of the evaluation of public opinion for emergent events were determined using the DEMATEL\(-\)ANP method, and the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model was constructed to evaluate the degree of emergent events' urgency; in addition, empirical analysis was conducted on four public events. The following conclusions can be drawn.  
First, an index system consisting of 5 first-level indicators and 13 second-level indicators was established for emergent events after repeated rectification and selection under the principles of profession, practicality, quantification, correlation, and importance via an extensive literature review to improve the existing public opinion index systems, which have the problem of being cumbersome, redundant, and difficult to obtain or to quantify.  
Second, the DEMTEL\(-\)ANP model used in some research papers often obtains the individual weights and then derives their final mixed weights, which requires experts to repeat the evaluation of the same system twice that does not take advantage of it fully. This study improved it by taking the results of the DEMATEL as the input of the ANP to attain the weights of the indicators scientifically.  
Third, the core of the evaluation of public opinion is to guess the developing trend and the degree of urgency of the emergent events, which is in accordance with the principles of fuzzy mathematics. Therefore, this study applies the principle of fuzzy relationship synthesis to quantify some factors with unclear boundaries, on which it then conducted a comprehensive evaluation.  
In summary, the DEMATEL\(-\)ANP fuzzy comprehensive model has the following merits: it derives the weights of indicators scientifically by taking their interdependent relationship fully into account; fuzzy evaluation deals with fuzzy objects using more accurate numerical means, and it can conduct a more scientific, reasonable quantitative evaluation  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline
**Events** & **Social Field** & **Evaluation Value** & **Level** \\ \hline Math textbook with inappropriate illustrations & Education & 0.80 & Extreme \\ CNKI monopoly & Business & 0.52 & Medium \\ Shifts in the COVID-19 policy & Public health & 0.87 & Extreme \\ Flight MU5735 crash & Security & 0.81 & Extreme \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 8: Evaluation results of four public opinion events.  
of the information presenting fuzziness; finally, the evaluation result is a vector containing richer information, not a point value, which not only portrays the evaluated events more accurately, but also can be further processed to obtain more reference information.  
In this study, from a mathematical statistical perspective, the DEMATEL\(-\)ANP fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model was developed to assess the urgency of public opinion events, though it still has some limitations. In future research, machine learning models should be incorporated to improve its accuracy and dynamics.  
Conceptualization, H.W.; methodology, L.L.; validation, H.W. and T.L.; formal analysis, L.L. and T.L.; investigation, T.L. and L.L.; data curation, T.L.; writing--original draft preparation, L.L. and H.W. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research received no external funding.  
Not applicable.  
The data used to support the findings of this study are included within the article.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.