Fan Bonai, Liu Sifang, Pei Guanxiong, Wu Yufei, Zhu Lian
Zhejiang Research Base for China's Non-Public Economic Personages, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China.
Institute for Public Policy of Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
Front Psychol. 2021 Apr 14;12:663485. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.663485. eCollection 2021.
Media is the principal source of public information, and people's trust in news has been a critical mechanism in social cohesion. In recent years, the vast growth of new media (e.g., internet news portals) has brought huge change to the way information is conveyed, cannibalizing much of the space of traditional media (e.g., traditional newspapers). This has led to renewed attention on media credibility. The study aims to explore the impact of media channel on trust in news and examine the role of news type. Twenty-six participants were asked to make trust-distrust decisions after reading a variety of news headlines from different media channels while undergoing electroencephalography (EEG) monitoring. The electrophysiological results showed that, for hard news (e.g., important news related to public life), the new media condition elicited smaller N100 and larger P200 amplitudes than the traditional media condition. However, for soft news (e.g., entertainment, and non-related to vital interest), there was no significant difference. The study suggests that the fitness of media channel and news type may influence the evaluation of news, impacting participants' affective arousal and attention allocation in the early stage and influencing trust in news. These results provide neurocognitive evidence of individuals' trust toward hard and soft news consumed via different media channels, yielding new insights into trust in media and contributing to media trust theory.
媒体是公众信息的主要来源，人们对新闻的信任一直是社会凝聚力的关键机制。近年来，新媒体（如互联网新闻门户网站）的迅猛发展给信息传播方式带来了巨大变化，挤占了传统媒体（如传统报纸）的大量空间。这引发了对媒体可信度的重新关注。该研究旨在探讨媒体渠道对新闻信任的影响，并考察新闻类型的作用。26名参与者在接受脑电图（EEG）监测的同时，阅读来自不同媒体渠道的各种新闻标题后，被要求做出信任或不信任的决定。电生理结果表明，对于硬新闻（如与公众生活相关的重要新闻），新媒体条件下诱发的N100波幅较小，P200波幅较大，而传统媒体条件下则不然。然而，对于软新闻（如娱乐新闻，与切身利益无关），两者没有显著差异。该研究表明，媒体渠道与新闻类型的适配性可能会影响对新闻的评价，在早期阶段影响参与者的情感唤醒和注意力分配，进而影响对新闻的信任。这些结果为个体对通过不同媒体渠道获取的硬新闻和软新闻的信任提供了神经认知证据，为媒体信任研究提供了新的见解，并丰富了媒体信任理论。
