Research On Persuasive Effect Of Refuting Rumors Information Of Health And Its Influencing Factors

Covid-19 constitutes a global pandemic,with 202 countries and regions except China reporting confirmed cases as of 12:00 Beijing time on April 1,2020.The flood of fake health information during this period not only endangered people’s physical and mental health,but also easily caused social unrest.How to effectively control the false health information in social network to stabilize the people and fight the epidemic has become an urgent issue of era subjects.The scarcity of flowing,open discourse power and cognitive time in social media makes it easy for individuals to judge facts and disseminate homogeneous information based on the collective cognition formed by others’ opinions.Inspired by this,this paper focuses on the "peripheral cues" with important suggestive effects,in order to explore the persuasive effect of different combinations of clues to dispel rumors of health on individuals and provide new ideas for the design and communication of corrective information.This study adopts the method of 2x3 online control experiment.A and B refuting information materials of health about COVID-19 with different types of information sources(official information sources/ professional information sources/ personal information sources)and different social characteristics(high forwarding amounts/low forwarding amounts)were designed.Before and after 14 groups reading different types of refuting rumors information of health,this study measures individuals’ level of anxiety,belief and willingness to share rumors.Finally,560 valid samples are analyzed to reach the experimental conclusion.The experimental results show that: First,at the same information source,the refuting rumor materials with high number of forwarding can better reduce the anxiety level,belief degree and sharing intention of the public for rumors than those with low forwarding amounts.The important influence of Bandwagon Effect on individual persuasion is verified.Second,with the same forwarding amounts,the refuting rumor materials from the official and professional information sources have a better effect on the reduction of the anxiety level,belief degree and communication intention of the public than that from the personal.It confirms the important role of authoritative hints in correcting online pseudo-health information.Third,when the refuting rumors information of health is from the personal sources with high forwarding amounts,the effect of refuting rumors is better than that from the official and professional sources with low forwarding amounts.Innovative discoveries have been made in this outbreak during our study work,that is,having "authority" in this outbreak is no longer a "passport" for people to trust the refuting rumors information of health.Because of the homogenization effect of information,individuals begin to appear on the social information platform as equal as the official/professional and also play an important role.Fourth,the official information source with the high forwarding amounts is the most effective combination which has the best persuasive effects.It provides a new example for the clue accumulation effect of the refuting rumors information of health.According to the results of study,this paper proposes that the official government,professional medical institutions,the public and Weibo platforms should work together to improve the effectiveness of refuting rumors information of health.The official should establish the normalized sense of crisis,timely and "honestly" issue authoritative disinformation,at the same time,the "chilling effect" or the "Tacitus trap" should also be avoided.Medical institutions and related personnel should refute rumors in an approachable way with professional knowledge based on the needs of the public.Citizens should correctly exert the "power of onlookers",try to find a balance between freedom of speech and civic responsibility,and improve their own verification awareness of false information discrimination.The Weibo platform can use data technology to make "real-time prediction" and optimize the audit mechanism of peripheral clues and webpage presentation.This study examines the important role of edge clues in the refuting information of health,as well as explores the best combination of clues of refuting rumors and rethinks the current refuting information of health.In the critical period,this study provides the Chinese sample to correct the pseudo-health information for the whole world,and provides a reference for exploring how to develop effective communication strategy of refuting rumor information about COVID-19,which has important theoretical and practical significance.