An Empirical Study On The Characteristics Of Information Dissemination And The Influencing Factors Of Attitude Change Among Servicemen

During the non-war period,the enemys'information offensive against us through various media is never stopped.When information becomes a new kind of weapon,all of us will inevitably under its attack.During the war,information warfare has become the mainstream means of combat in today's battlefield.The side with overwhelming advantage in the information war is often able to win the greatest victory at the least cost.There are five main factors related to the dissemination of information,that is,the source,the content,the media,the audience and the effect of communication.In the situation where the source and content of the information are uncontrollable,the research on the media and the information audience is particularly important.Information dissemination follows certain rules,audiences such as servicemen,policemen and functionaries,the communication characteristics are often related to their professions.This study uses survey method to investigate media contact and choice of trusted media in different conditions among servicemen;controlled experiments are used to observe how information characteristics?source type&information type?and audience characteristics?regulartory focus?influence attitude change;structural equation model is used to establish the attitude formation model through specific elements of a certain information spreading;two experiments at last testify how social indentity of source affect source reliability.The main results of this study are as follows:1.The survey discovered that the media servicemen most frequent contactare still traditional media such as television and newspapers.But soldiers will actively seek contact with the new media like mobile internet.Media that servicemen most often contact and that most trust are different,usually,relatives,comrades and other close relationships are comparably more reliable to soldiers.2.Under the low involvement condition,information from the professional source(F_?1,140?=5.96,p<0.05)caused more attitude change.Meanwhile,there was an interaction effect between regulatory focus and source types(F_?1,140?=7.01,p=0.01),subjects with promotion focus trust friend source more.When reading the high involvement information,the interaction disappears(F_?1,154?=0.58,p=0.45),the subjects trust the expert source more.3.Both main effects of source type(F_?1,158?=18.80,p<0.01)and information type(F_?1,158?=4.79,p=0.03)are significant,and there is no interaction,which indicates that military groups believe more in expert sources and easier to accept text messages.4.There is an interaction effect between information type and regulatory focus(F_?1,132?=6.06,p=0.02).Persuasive effect of text information significantly reduced?p<0.01?in prevention population,indicating people with prevention focus have less attitude change compared to picture information.5.In high involved population,the quality of information contributes most to information usefulness?E=0.54,p<0.01?and reliability?E=0.67,p<0.01?,and also easily to be affected in conflict situations?E=0.17,p<0.01?.6.The social identity complexity will affect the military community's trust(F_?1,100?=27.26,p<0.01),the source with more social identity information,the more stable will it get trust.Social distance plays a mediating role in this effect?Z=2.45,p=0.01?.7.The soldiers trust their superiors more(F(_1,193)=6.42,p=0.01),however,when giving more social identity information of the superiors,there is no significant difference in trust between the superior and the peer?p=0.69?.The main conclusions of this study are as follows:Media with most frequent contact are still traditional ones like television and books;servicemen show great reliance on internet and mobile phones and trust official media such as massed learning and formal notification most;interpersonal and official sources are servicemen's most realiable channels in conflict situations.Regardless of involvement,professional source gets the most persuasive effect,and are more influential to prrevention groups under low involvement;to promotion groups,friend source are more persuasive under low involvement while professional source are more persuasive under high involvement;text information is more persuasive under high involvement,and is more effective to promotion groups.Information quality is a critical factor in attitude formation,and affects reliability and usefulness more;reliability of information influence attitude more straight,especially under low involvement level;cognitive conflict only influences information perception under high involvement level,and affects attitude more straight.Emphasizing the multiple social identities of interpersonal source will improve its reliability;but when the source is supervisor,only emphasizing its position will make it more convicing.To sum up,our study takes information propagation in military environment as the research target,and uses the survey method,the experiments and structural equation model.We find how regulatory focus,source type,information type and social identity complexity affect soldiers'attitude formation and their interrelationships.We also verified differences caused by diverse factors of attitude formation under disparate involvements,which provides a new way for pertinent research of the communication study among military groups.In addition,this study provides theoretical support for the exploration of giving early warning and defense of traumatic information in non-war period.This research points out the weak points that the army should pay attention to in the face of different information and different audiences,and gives important reference value to the attack means and defense methods of information warfare.