Large fire disasters have the characteristics of unpredictability, great harmfulness and high profile, and they are easy to become a hot topic on the Internet and develop into public opinion in a short time. If not handled properly, the event may cause adverse public sentiment or even lead to mass incidents. So it is very meaningful to study the network public opinion in large fire disasters. Firstly, the paper introduces the acquisition method of network public opinion information in large fire disasters. Then, an in-depth research on large fire disasters is made from two aspects, which are dissemination of power source and the dissemination law. The dissemination of power source is divided into five types, containing netizens, media, parties, opinion leaders and the government. Several dissemination law curves are also presented. Finally, some coping strategies from the perspective of information release and power sources are put forward. The study provides references and basis for the government to understand the network public opinion in large fire disasters and make corresponding measures. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Peer-review under responsibility of School of Engineering of Sun Yat-Sun University
