Network Communication In The Third Person Effect Research

The Third-Person Effect (TPE), which has been demonstrated as a widely-exist perceptual bias in the field of mass communication by a host of scholars since 1983, indicates a tendency that audiences will perceive others to be more vulnerable to the negative media content than self. As a result, individuals may take some following actions to response, which is defined as the behavioral component of TPE. This study aims to explore this hypothesis in the context of nationalism message on Internet and identify the underlying factors and explore the relationship between the third person perceptual component and its consequent behavior.The Collision Event happened in September 2010, which refered to the territorial problem of Diaoyu Island, had gone into a far-reaching and typical diplomatic conflict between China and Japan in recent years. Subsequently, an activity entitled"Diaoyu Island, Mother Loves You"was voluntarily hosted in Internet with a message playing an important role in organizing the activity and shaping the public opinion in cyber-space. It is necessary to investigate its prefound communication effect on audiences.An online survey of 404 Chinese college students was conducted to collect data and tested both their perceptual and behavioral component on TPE. Not only audiences'support for media censorship, which was usually defined as the behavioral component of TPE in most previous studies, but also their behavior of retransmitting the nationalism message to others, their intention to boycott Japanese goods and to refuse sight-seeing trips to Japan have been examined as the"influence of persumed influence"in this study.From the results of analysis we can see TPE is a common social phenomenon. People tend to underestimate negative media effect on self but overestimate that on others, no matter whether they have been exposed to the message before, and no matter how they evaluate social desirability of media content. Even those who persumed this message to be socially desirable will also assume that others are more persuaded.What's more, after controling the audiences'the third person perception (TPP) on internet media, their TPP on message remains robust.The results of multiple regression show that Internet age and TPP on message are positively associated with that on internet. And audiences'subjective knowledge about the issue, interests on politics, self-esteem and TPP on internet are positive predictable variables of TPP on message, while frequency of interpersonal communication on the issue and nationalism tendency are negative predictors. However, neither desirability nor credibility of message can predict audiences'TPP on message.In terms of consequent behavior, education, Internet age, subjective knowledge, exposure to the message, self-esteem, and TPP on message are negatively associated with their frequency of sending this message to others; as positive variables, credibility of internet, interpersonal communication, message salience, desirability and credibility of message, and presumed other's behavior of sending the mesaage are significantly associated with their own behavior of sending the message. Internet age, Internet use, desirability and credibility of message, nationalism tendency, TPP on message and presumed others'relevant behavioral intention are significant predictors of individuals'intention to boycott Japanese goods as well as their intention to refuse trips to Japan. There is also a negative correlation between audiences'education background and their refusal for trips. In addition, their intention to boycott Japanese goods is positively predicted by credibility of internet and interpersonal communication, negatively predicted by their exposure to message and self-esteem.As another behavioral consequence of TPE in this study, support for censorship is negatively associated with self-esteem, desirability and credibility of message. However, TPP on message can hardly predict support for censorship, which is contrast to the most prior research findings.It's worthy to note that self-efficacy, rather than self-respect, contributes more to TPE in this study. By comparing this result with previous research findings, the author argued that self-efficacy can better explain behavioral component on TPE. Moreover, interpersonal communication was demonstrated to be a significant independent variable in TPE. As suggested at the end of this paper, Theory of Reasoned Action can be applied to explain the behavioral component of TPE. Spiral of Silence, as well as other theories in the area of media effect, should be associated with TPE for better understanding. Advices for future research were also outlined.