The Study Of The New Media Trust’s Impact On The Government Trust

Since 2013, national leaders have repeatedly stressed the importance for official new media occupying the propaganda positions. Subsequently, official wechat and microblog which were registered and run by the government agencies mushroomed in various new media platforms. Some new official media were widely praised by the public for answering doubts from the audiences timely, screening rumors, passing first-hand information on major events accurately. While the others got widely criticized even affecting public trust in the government because they showed poor reaction to current events that almost become "zombie number". In this study, we applied the balance theory to verify that the public trust in government were affected by the public trust in new media and media’s attitude to the government related reports.Based on the existing relevant literature, we believe that the public trust in government has relationship with some facts which are new media (includingprivate new media, new media run by agencies and official new media)trust, public trust in new media, media’s attitude to the government related reports and demographic factors. And we proposed 5assumptions. Through the online survey, we collected 1120 samples to carry out empirical analysis.Through factor analysis, theNew Media Trust Scale was modified. The amended five dimensions included timeliness, news depth, news integrity, fairness and responsiveness. The study found that the public confidence in different new media is different. The confidence in official new media andnew media run by agencieswas significantly higher than the confidence in private new media. The official new media’s attitude to the government related reports is most positive. The level of public trust in government is maintained beyond the middle level.Through thecorrelation analysis, we found that the public trust in government and trust in new media is indeed positively correlated, further examination by regression analysis found that the media’s attitude to the government related reports is a significant moderator between government trust and new media trust. Amongthe official media trust dimension, the responsivenessis the most significant elements. In addition, gender, age, party members, education, income significantly affect public trust in government.In view of the above analysis, the present study tested three hypotheses, established a new government trust regression model. At last, the article concludes some suggestions for the official new media operatorsthatemphasize the importance of official new media development and enhance public trust in government; official media need to strengthen interaction with the public, and timely answers to public questions; focus on youth needs to master the initiative opinion battlefield.