Times makes heroes or heroes shape their times?: The emotion relationship between elites and masses on micro-blogging

Opinion leaders´ researches from Communication suggested that the elites can lead the masses. But other evidence argued the discourse power of masses has been improved with the rising of masses, especially in the We-media era, which challenges the view that the masses will follow the elites blindly. We examined the relationship between elites and masses by focusing on their emotion relationship and collecting data from China´s Sina Weibo. The Granger Causality Test results indicate that the emotions of economic elites have more influence on the masses than those of cultural elites. Cultural elites´ emotions are even driven by the masses. Our study reveals that economic capital has more influence than cultural capital in current China, and the effect of times producing heroes is slightly stronger than the effect of heroes shaping the times overall. Our findings are meaningful for understanding and managing the development of society from interdisciplinary perspectives.