The Effects Of Social Media Rumor Refutation On Attitude Change

In the age of Web 2.0,tracing origins of information has become more difficult than ever,since the channels of communication have never been so diversified.The emergence of rumor becomes almost inevitable.As the most effective content dissemination platforms,social media,led by Weibo and WeChat,have launched several rumor-refuting products or services.But the effects of such refutation remain a mystery.Researches on rumor refutation in social media context are overwhelmingly concerned with "strategies" rather than"effects",and those that do focus on rumor refutation effects seldom hold the discussion in the context of social media.Taking Rumor Grinder,a prominent rumor refuting agency on Chinese social media,as the object of study,this thesis tests the effects of the rumor refutation based on Protection Motivation Theory(Rogers&Maddux,1983)and other research results concerning the correlation between attitude change and other factors,including the type of rumors,source credibility and pre-attitude.Results show that refuting messages from Rumor Grinder are generally effective in changing people's attitudes.In particular,type of refutation and pre-attitude are significantly correlated with attitude change,while type of rumors and source credibility are not significantly correlated with attitude change.