A New Leader–Follower Public-Opinion Evolution Model for Maritime Transport Incidents: A Case from Suez Canal Blockage

The Suez Canal blockage (SCB) event, one of the world’s major transportation arteries, has attracted significant public attention. This article proposes a new leader–follower public-opinion evolution model on the SCB under online social media, which considers two aspects: (1) obtaining public opinion and attitudes about the SCB; and (2) grasping the evolutionary trend in public opinion on the SCB. To identify the sentiment tendency contained in the collected data, a hybrid sentiment analysis algorithm is presented to analyze Chinese and English data, which captures and analyzes public attitudes on the SCB. In addition, then, the opinion leader-identification mechanism algorithm is proposed, which divides leaders into three categories: positive, neutral and negative leaders. Moreover, the Hegselmann–Krause-based opinion leaders–followers opinion evolution model for the SCB event is established, which not only reflects the interaction of opinions among the online public, but also updates the opinions of the online public until it reaches a stable state. Finally, results and analysis for the SCB are discussed.