{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,26]],"date-time":"2026-05-26T14:13:11Z","timestamp":1779804791527,"version":"3.53.1"},"reference-count":38,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"6","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,26]],"date-time":"2026-05-26T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1779753600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Shenzhen Higher Education Stable Support Project of China","award":["20220817183401001"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["20220817183401001"]}]},{"name":"Guangdong Philosophy and Social Science Foundation Disciplinary Co-construction Project of China","award":["GD23XYJ90"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["GD23XYJ90"]}]},{"name":"Youth Talent Fund from Xi\u2019an Jiaotong University, China","award":["GG6J011"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["GG6J011"]}]},{"name":"Open Fund of the State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology","award":["SKLLQG2431"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["SKLLQG2431"]}]},{"name":"General Higher Education Institutions in Guangdong Province","award":["2025WCXTD030"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2025WCXTD030"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Systems"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The analysis of publicly expressed opinions on social media is crucial for designing effective behavioral public policies. By considering both social-media-based public opinion (operationalized as individual, non-representative expressions) and official governmental positions (formal policy statements), this paper employs a systemic case study to understand the political and social factors that influence decision-making in major international events such as Japan\u2019s nuclear wastewater discharge. Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic clustering and correlation analysis, this study examines public opinion from five language groups (Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, and Indonesian, each mapped to a primary country or region: China, the US\/UK as representative English-speaking countries, Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia respectively) regarding Japan\u2019s nuclear wastewater discharge, compares governmental attitudes across these five national contexts, and identifies the factors behind their divergence. Public opinion was clustered into six themes; combined with domain expert analysis, they vary significantly across countries that speak different languages in our translated Twitter corpus, though translation artifacts may affect fine-grained comparisons. Public opinion as expressed on Twitter\/X is closely associated with a country\u2019s level of international engagement, maritime industry development, and geographic distance from Japan. Furthermore, exploratory analysis of a small set of six countries suggests that governmental positions are influenced more by strategic and economic ties with Japan than by domestic public opinion. Given the small sample size, this finding is preliminary and requires validation in larger-N studies. Public and government opinions on Japan\u2019s nuclear wastewater discharge are sharply divided in the English- and Japanese-language corpora (representing the US\/UK and Japan), polarized in the Korean-language corpus (South Korea), and relatively aligned in the Chinese- and Indonesian-language corpora (China and Indonesia). These findings regarding the entire international event system suggest that governments should take public opinion into greater account when addressing international public crises and encourage broader public participation through digital platforms to better respond to global challenges. However, due to the inherent limitations of cross-lingual translation, our cross-country comparisons should be interpreted as indicative rather than definitive.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/systems14060609","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,26]],"date-time":"2026-05-26T13:28:21Z","timestamp":1779802101000},"page":"609","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["The Driving Forces of Governments\u2019 Positions on International Events: A Systemic Case Study"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"14","author":[{"given":"Zhiyong","family":"Hao","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Finance and Economics, Shenzhen University of Information Technology, Shenzhen 518172, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Meiying","family":"Xie","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi\u2019an Jiaotong University, Xi\u2019an 710049, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Xu","family":"Zhu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Marxism, Xi\u2019an Jiaotong University, Xi\u2019an 710049, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jiawei","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Public Policy and Administration, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi\u2019an 710129, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Xiao","family":"Han","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi\u2019an Jiaotong University, Xi\u2019an 710049, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Linru","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi\u2019an Jiaotong University, Xi\u2019an 710049, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Lu","family":"Dong","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi\u2019an Jiaotong University, Xi\u2019an 710049, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Chanjun","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Journalism and New Media, Xi\u2019an Jiaotong University, Xi\u2019an 710049, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Junji","family":"Cao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Zhanfeng","family":"Dong","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Environmental Protection Laboratory of Environmental Planning and Policy Simulation, The Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning, Beijing 100012, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yichen","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi\u2019an Jiaotong University, Xi\u2019an 710049, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,26]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"107057","DOI":"10.1016\/j.asoc.2020.107057","article-title":"Topic detection and sentiment analysis in Twitter content related to COVID-19 from Brazil and the USA","volume":"101","author":"Garcia","year":"2021","journal-title":"Appl. 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