Psychological Factors Influencing Trust of Social Media News in Web2.0 Era——the case of “weibo”
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015
Author(s)
Chen, Bing-Chun
Abstract
This study investigated factors influencing trust of social media news . Adopting online survey, this study collected 276 valid responses from Mainland China’s largest social media “Sina weibo”. Results revealed that, psychology factors indeed influence users’trust towards the social media. In terms of of message sender, relation closeness towards the senders and the strength of senders’ influence are proved to be significant factors affecting users’ trust. In terms of message content, news with more abrupt nature,higher sensitivity and stronger negativeness earn more trust in social media. In terms of media platform, users with higher media exposure and higher levels of satisfaction have more trust in social media; reversal mindsets are indeed found in the process of social media news communication in Mainland China’s online environment..However, higher self-efficacy does not cause more credibility of social media news. All in all, most results accorded with hypothesis of the research, which confirmed that psychological factors influence in the reception of social media information. In addition, the relationship between social media and traditional media reveal to be a positive rather than negative pattern. Considering accuracy, unbiased, compeleteness, trustworthiness, traditional media still win over social media in the dissemination of news information.
Subjects
social media
traditional media
news and information
media trust
audience psychology
Type
thesis
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