Emotional Framing in the Naming of Weibo Hot Search Topics

Abstract

Weibo hot search topic names often serve as the first point of contact between users and public events. These names do more than identify what happened. Through word choice, sentence structure, and the selection of details, they can guide users toward anger, sympathy, fear, blame, or moral judgment. This paper examines the naming logic of Weibo hot search topics and focuses on several common forms of emotional framing, including conflict-oriented naming, moralized naming, and sympathy-oriented naming. It also discusses how these forms affect early judgment, remove context, strengthen group emotion, and create lasting labels for the people involved. The paper argues that emotional expression is not always improper, but it becomes problematic when emotion replaces facts, hides uncertainty, or assigns responsibility too early. Hot search topic names should keep the main action, source, time, and level of certainty clear. Stronger editorial review and timely correction are also needed when the wording may mislead users or cause harm.