Research On The Difference Of The Third-person Effect In Electronic Game Environment In China

Since it was first proposed in 1983,the "third-person effect" theory has become one of many media effect theories that reflect the "strong effect" of mass communication,which reflects a brand-new "indirect effect view",and provides us with a new way of thinking and recognition perspective for understanding classical macro effect theories such as "Spiral of silence".The core idea is that:When people estimate the impact of mass media Cognition,attitude and behavior of self and others,they tend to overestimate the impact on others and underestimate the impact on themselves.The media can achieve the goal of manipulating the audience by exerting influences on the "third person" other than "you and me ".Until today,the theory has been developed for nearly 40 years,during which profound changes have taken place in the media environment around the world.The popularity of the Internet and mobile networks has completely broken the monopoly position of the mass media in the discourse right in the past.From this,many new media forms have emerged,such as social media,short videos and video games,which are reshaping people’s daily life.The new media ecology has challenged the traditional effect theory,and with the deepening of the theoretical research,it has become the focus of academic research to investigate the universality of the"third-person effect" theory in various media environments.By the end of 2019,the number of electronic game players in China has reached 494 million,and the game industry has become a pillar industry of our national economy.China’s electronic games have been stigmatized by the main-stream media for a long period of time,it has something to do with the cognitive bias of the society towards the negative effects of video games,and is similar to the connotation of the "third-person effect" theory.This study explores the phenomenon of the "third-person effect" in China’s electronic game environment in this context,and divides the player groups into core players,marginalized players and ordinary players according to the new dividing standard of social distance,and compares the similarities and differences in cognition and behavior of the"third-person effect" among different groups of players.With the online questionnaire survey,508 valid questionnaires were collected by the way of random sampling.The SPSS25.0 was used to process the questionnaire data,and the statistical methods such as paired-samples t-test,variance analysis and correlation analysis are used to test the cognition and influencing factors of the "third-person effect",as well as the relationship between cognition and behavior among the overall players and all groups of players,and also the regression analysis method was used to establish the influence factor model of three kinds of players’ cognition of the "third-person effect".The research findings show that the cognition of the "third-person effect" is existed in the electronic game environment in China;player category is a significant predictor variable that affects the cognition of the "third-person effect",and it is scientific to take the player category as the dividing standard of social distance.There is no significant cognition of the "third-person effect" in the core players and the ordinary players,while cognition of the "third-person effect" is significant among the marginalized players,and there are 11 factors that affect cognitive intensity,such as "educational level".The study also found that the cognition of the"third-person effect" in the electronic game environment can trigger three kinds of follow-up behaviors,including "supporting the content review of electronic games","taking immediate action against objectionable content in games" and"participating in purchase when a electronic game holds promotional activities such as game props and costumes".Not all different groups of players will have the above three behaviors.No follow-up behaviors are found in the core players,ordinary players will have the behavior of "unsupporting content review of video games",while the marginalized players will have the above three follow-up behaviors.Based on the conclusions of previous scholars and the author’s personal experience,this paper makes a rational analysis of the research results,and puts forward the relevant social issues applicable to this research,discusses the social issues at all levels involved in this research from the sequence which are expanded vertically from micro to macro of individual players,enterprise organizations and national policies,and finally gives some suggestions.To sum up,this research is a bold attempt to verify and explore the localization of the traditional media effect theory in the new era and new environment.Although there are some deficiencies in the research process,on the whole,it has a high reference value.