Research On The Influence Mechanism Of Mass Media On Government Trust

Government trust is the spiritual link between the public and the political power.It reflects the images of the ruling party and the governments at all levels in the minds of the public and plays a key role in promoting the sustainable and stable development of economy and society.As the core channel of political information dissemination,mass media is closely related to the attitude changes of government trust.In recent years,the rapid development of network new media technology has triggered profound changes of media environment in China,and brings many challenges to the building of government trust.Under this background,it has a great theoretical and practical significance to research the relationship and the internal mechanism between mass media and government trust.Based on the media effect theory,the political socialization theory,the rational choice theory and the post-material value theory,this dissertation make a theoretical analysis and an empirical research on the influence mechanism of mass media on government trust in China.Through the quantitative analysis of the existing literature,we comb the different analysis perspectives of government trust research and make a thorough discussion on the interactions between them.Based on the media communication effect,we construct an analysis framework of government trust and put forward the “intergenerational differences in the influence of media use on government trust” and the “influence mechanism of media influence on government trust” theoretical models and their relative hypotheses.In order to test the theoretical analysis hypotheses,we use the data from the World Values Survey and the China Netizens Social Awareness Survey to conduct empirical tests,and put forward the policy recommendations based on the conclusions of the study.The research conclusions are as follows.At present,there is a trend of inter-generational decline in the government trust of public.This is due to the intergenerational group differences on the influence of the frequency of political information access on government trust.The influence extent of traditional media on the public is positively correlated with the level of government trust,while the influence extent of new media on the public is negatively correlated with the level of government trust.Post-materialistic values and performance appraisal factors constitute multiple mediating pathways.The specific intermediary path of post-materialist values has a significant impact on the government trust of youth groups,and the specific intermediary path of government performance evaluation has a more prominent impact on the government trust of the middle aged and the elderly groups.The originalities of this dissertation are reflected in the following three aspects.First,we analyze the relationship between mass media and government trust from the perspective of composite research and construct an analysis framework of government trust based on the media communication effect,expanding the existing research ideas.Second,we establish the theoretical model of “intergenerational difference” and “influence mechanism” on the influence of mass media to government trust,and test the relevant hypotheses through empirical analysis,making up for the deficiency of the existing research on the mechanism of government trust.Third,we take the two dimensions that affect the media communication into consideration,and use a composite variable composed by media use frequency and media trust degree to examine the impact and the internal mechanism of mass media on government trust,enriching the empirical research in the related fields on a certain extent.