A Study On The Influence Of College Students’ Wechat Use On Altruistic Behavior During The COVID-19 Pandemic

The great practice of fighting against the COVID-19 epidemic has cast a great spirit of anti-epidemic,and the altruistic behavior of helping others represented by college students has become the mainstream of society and has become a trend in the whole society.In this epidemic,compared with traditional mainstream media represented by newspapers and TV in the past,new media represented by "two micro and one end" has become the main channel for people to receive and disseminate information.Wechat has become the first channel for people to spread and receive information in the epidemic due to its fast transmission speed and wide range.In this case,the influence of wechat use on college students’ altruistic behaviors during the epidemic was studied,so as to provide effective suggestions for further exerting the role of media mobilization in future crisis situations and guiding the generation of more altruistic behaviors.This study takes college students as the research object,adopts a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods,and obtains research data through questionnaire survey and in-depth interview.Firstly,the online questionnaire was distributed using Wenjustar platform,and 330 valid questionnaires were collected.Correlation analysis was conducted on the questionnaire data,and four structural equation models were established to analyze the path coefficient of the influence of college students’ wechat use on altruistic behavior,and conclusions were drawn.Secondly,this paper selects 20 college students for in-depth interviews based on gender,age,education level and other factors to further understand the influence of wechat on the form,cause,object and difficulty of college students’ altruistic behavior.According to the data analysis,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)College students’ wechat use positively affects their altruistic behavior.(2)The social need and emotional communication motivation of wechat use motivation have the greatest influence on college students’ altruistic behavior.(3)Chat and voice/video functions used by wechat have the greatest impact on college students’ altruistic behaviors.(4)Among the epidemic information types contacted on wechat,helpfulness and health science information had the greatest impact on college students’ altruistic behavior.(5)Among the channels for obtaining epidemic information on wechat,the information from wechat friends and friends circle/wechat group had the greatest influence on college students’ altruistic behavior.In order to further understand the influence of wechat on college students’ altruistic behavior,this paper conducted a semi-structured in-depth interview with 20 college students and reached the following conclusions:(1)wechat has become one of the main channels for college students to obtain external information,communicate and make friends,and has an impact on the level of college students’ altruistic behavior.(2)College students’ altruistic behaviors mainly include providing material help to others and forwarding epidemy-related information.(3)The reasons for altruistic behavior are related to interest and emotional communication.(4)The object of altruistic behavior is mainly family,friends and classmates.(5)The difficulties of altruistic behavior are mainly obstacles at the platform level and information level.Therefore,based on the empirical research results and interview conclusions,this paper puts forward strategic suggestions on enhancing the "empathy" effect of information transmission in the future,giving full play to the constructive and "negative entropy" role of official media,improving the functions of social media platforms and taking advantage of the role of schools and families,so as to further improve the media mobilization ability in future risk events.Promote more altruistic behavior.