Antecedents Of Governmental Microblog Credibility

This paper research on the antecedents of Governmental Micro-blog Credibility fromtwo dimensions: Source and Receiver, with the theories about media authority, mediainfluence, reference group. The analysis around two research questions:(1) whether thecharacteristics of source will affect the Microblog’s credibility evaluation, such as authorityand influence?(2) whether the characteristics of audience will affect the credibilityevaluation, such as group attribution, convergence of psychology, relevant experiences?This study use2X2between-group factorial experiment, has two independentexperiments from dimensions: source and audience. Experiment I whose subjects weredivided into6groups (N＝234),was done offline, use a between-group with in-group method,want to find how the authority or influence of source influence the Micro-blog’s credibilityevaluation? Experiment II whose subjects were divided into2groups (N＝160),use abetween-group method,want to find whether the a group attribution, convergence ofpsychology or relevant experiences influence the Micro-blog’s credibility evaluation?This study found: On one hand, even if on the new social media such as Micro-blog, thesource dimension still has a significant impact on credibility. The authority and influence ofMicro-blog’s source all will significantly affect the users’ evaluation about the credibility.Specifically:(1) the higher authority of source, the highly credibility evaluated. the greaterinfluence of source, the highly credibility evaluated.(2) When two Microblog sources havean argument, audience are more inclined to believe that the higher-authority orgreater-influence source, and contrasty the authoritative source take a decisive effect.On the other hand, in the reference group environment, the Micro-blog usersdependent on others to make the credibility of the evaluation, and affect by the its ownexperience and awareness, credibility is not completely isolated personal attitudes.Specifically:(1) user group attribution, that is whether it is related Micro-blog fans, will be apositive impact on the evaluation of the Micro-blog credibility. But convergence ofpsychology, that is the number of a Micro-blog being transmitted or commented, don’t impacton the Micro-blog credibility significant.(2) User’s related experience, such as user’s background knowledge, stored stance, is a positive impact on the evaluation of theMicro-blog credibilityThis study will help to deepen the study of the theory of media credibility in the socialmedia context, has made innovation to deepen the theoretical study of the media credibility ina pluralistic media landscape.