Information Contact,Values Differentiation,and The Trust Of Chinese Netizens To The Government

Since the reform and opening up,the market has reshaped traditional Chinese social values and political values.In terms of political sphere,although Chinese people's political values still have been affected by authoritarianism,that is,the existence of political obedience,a political value mixed with freedom and democracy has emerged with the enhancement of the public perception of politics and the rise of the consciousness of rights.The differentiated political values have caused intensive disputes among Chinese people on a range of political,economic,social and some other issues,some of which have even gone beyond the scope of rationality,displaying fierce conflicts between different political values.In recent years,the new media,represented by the Internet,has gained rapid development and widespread popularity.The Internet not only provides a platform for people to exchange information,it also diversifies the channels for public access to political information.In this context,this article analyses the trust of Chinese netizens to the government under the background of diversified information access and political values,based on the data of "2014 Chinese netizens' ideology survey",which was chaired by Prof.Ma Deyong of Nankai University.It is found that different political values and different types of political information access will lead to different degrees of netizens' trust to the government.Specifically,,the authoritarian political values have a positive effect on netizens' trust to the government;while the post-authoritarian political values have a negative effect;Contact with the political information of Xinhua News Agency,People's Daily,CCTV,Sina and some other portals has a positive impact on netizens'trust to the government;while contact with the political information of Weibo,online communities and overseas media has a negative impact.For a long time,scholars' research on government trust is mainly focused on the hierarchical difference of government as a trust object and the group difference of the people as trustees.Scholars' attention to the trust of hierarchical difference of government is mainly based on what Weber's bureaucracy system;while attention to the trust of group difference of people is based on regional structure,identity and class attributes.Different from previous studies,this study explores reasons for the existence of the difference of government trust,from the differentiation of political values and the diversification of information contact.This study suggests that in addition to government's own performance and netizens' regional structure,identity and class attributes,the differentiation of political values and the diversification of information contact also result in different degrees of public trust to the government.