How Different Sources’ Risk Communicative Strategies Affect Their Perceived Credibility In Social Media

Based on the case of the PM2.5issue, this paper investigates how the risk communication strategies of three types of sources, namely the government institutions, experts, and opinion leaders, affect their respective perceived credibility in social media. Drawing upon relevant literature reviews, three research questions are proposed:1) In the PM2.5issue, what risk communicative strategies did the three types of sources use?2) how did the lay public evaluate the three types of sources’ credibility? and3) what are the correlations between different sources’risk communicative strategies and their perceived credibility, respectively? According to the content analysis of285micro-blogging posts and970comments directly linked to the PM2.5issue retrieved from Sina miro-blogging site from4December,2011to31January,2013, the study finds that:The positive risk communication strategies (i.e.,"acknowledgement""prevention","instruction" and "justification") were more frequently used by the three types of sources, while the negative strategies (i.e.,"denial","diversion", and "ignore") were less used. Besides, the government institutions’risk communication strategies were affected by the cycle of the PM2.5issue, whereas the experts and opinion leaders were not influenced.In terms of the sources’perceived credibility, both the government institutions and experts were considered as not credible by the lay public, with the former less credible than the latter. By contrast, the opinion leaders were regarded as relatively credible, with the highest degree of credibility among three sources.As with the correlations between sources’risk communicative strategies and their perceived credibility, the results reveal that the government institutions’ diversion and ignore strategies lowered their perceived credibility, with the former strategy contributing more than the latter one. The experts’ignore strategy lowered their perceived credibility, while the use of prevention raised the credibility. In addition, the adoption of prevention by opinions leaders help to raise their perceived credibility.Whether environmental risks can be effectively managed depends largely on the mutual trust between different sources and the lay public, and the sources’perceived credibility plays a major role in building the mutual trust. Hopefully, this study will offer some practical suggestions in regard to how to build social trust in an environmental risk context.