The Mediation Effect Of Social Media Use On Political Trust Of College Students:An Empirically Study

Nowadays, social media has become an increasingly important vehicle for interpersonal communication. Having instant, interactive etc. unique transmission capability, social media has become a platform for people to learn information, interact socially and express opinions. In China, the use of social media has political and journalistic characteristics, consequently, it has impacted the political attitude of the general public.Recently, citizen trust has been seen as declining these years in China. The government performance, media content, personality traits, social capital are all creating increasing broad and stable influence on political trust. These factors had been studied by many scholars, our study focus on the heterogeneity of political discussion networks, and examines the mediating role of discussion network heterogeneity on social media in the relationship between social media use for news/information and political trust.Heterogeneous discussion can be operationalized in two ways: competition between points of view or opposition to another's view. College students are most likely to use social media, concern about public affairs, and compare to another group of people, their attitude can be more likely to be changed. By using questionnaire research method, based on the survey data of social media information use of 1078 college students, the status quo is explored, the influence between information use of social media, network discussion heterogeneous and political trust is discussed.The results indicate that: a. the information use of social media can promote college students' political trust, which reduce their confidence in the political system, leading to an “ability-intention” dual political trust pattern. b. discussion network heterogeneity mediates the relationship between citizens' social media use for news/information and their political trust. In other words, social media use for information positively influence individuals' discussion network heterogeneity, which consequently contributes to increased levels of political trust. The findings of this research caution the government paying more attention upon public's political trust, especially in the new media era. It is necessary for administrative department to develop effective ways online in government-public communication and pay more attention to the quality of public discussion.