The Correlations Between Internet Political Trust And The Discourse Representation Of Governmental Weibo

Based on the previous researches on Political Trust,this paper aims to explore the connotation of the concept and the relevant factors of it in the field of the Internet.Since information is exchanged as symbol through the Internet,this paper attempts to examine the correlation between Internet Political Trust and the political discourses represented through the official governmental Weibo accounts.The term of "Internet Political Trust" used in this article refers to the faith the public have towards their governments during interaction with the latter's Internet expression strategies and discourse constructions.This mainly presents as to what extend people are willing to reckon the authority of the government,how strongly people believe in the discourses communicated by the government and to what extend they comply with the Internet management strategies of the government.The previous study of Image Recovery Theory found that Chinese governmental Weibo accounts tend to construct discourse with four strategies when facing public crisis,which are 1)providing factual information,2)correcting promises,3)correcting actions and 4)resorting to political leaders.Accordingly,this paper tries to build up a relation model between Internet Political Trust and the discourse representation of governmental Weibo which has these four strategies as the second-order variables.Based on a case study of the Landslide Event,which happened in Guangming New District,Shenzhen,on December 20th,2015,and with both methods of questionnaire survey and in-depth interview(the permanent residents of Shenzhen as respondents),this paper empirically researches on a total of 6 hypotheses,so as to improve the above relation model.Three types pf research results come out:(1)the extents of public satisfaction with the total four strategies are all positively associated with the Internet Political Trust.(2)there is difference between the influences.Strategies as "providing factual information" and"correcting actions" both show higher relevance than "correcting promises" and "resorting to political leaders",among which "correcting actions" has the highest relevance working well beyond "providing factual information".However,it hasn't been demonstrated whether the extent of public satisfaction of "correcting promises" or "resorting to political leaders" has lowest relevance.(3)it is found that the strategy of "correcting actions" is correlated to the other three,of such interactions have the effects working together to positively associate with the Internet Political Trust.Finally,the paper tries to repair the relation model between the Internet Political Trust and the discourse representation by governmental Weibo accounts.Besides,because the discourse strategies refer to different trust basis and the distinctions between their influences on the Internet Political Trust,the paper proposes that "institutional trust" has become the primary basis of the Internet Political Trust in China while the power of"personality trust" is marginalized,the feature of which is similar to the political trust in reality.Though the personality factors have impacts on the Internet Political Trust,the public gradually require the institutionalizing of "personality trust".Moreover,under the dual effects of Internet and the "institutional trust",the Internet Political Trust is reconstructed when the Internet space becomes more and more rational,so as facing both opportunities and challenges.