在线健康谣言的传播意愿研究——谣言来源、类型和传播对象的作用

A Research on the Spreading Willingness of Online Health Rumors: The Role of Source, Type and Epistemic Belief

社交媒体上时常出现许多健康谣言,这些谣言的广泛传播不仅对社会媒体平台造成信誉损害,也对个人和社会造成严重影响,因此,对健康谣言扩散的研究已引起学术界的重视。本文从谣言的来源、内容和接收者三方面综合探究影响用户传播意愿的因素。采用3(谣言来源:对照组vs.质量来源vs.数量来源)×2(谣言类型:恐惧谣言vs.希望谣言)的组间实验设计,对被试的认识信念和感知健康状态进行了测量。实验结果表明,数量来源和质量来源的健康谣言均能增强个体的传播意愿,二者对传播意愿的影响程度无显著差异。与希望谣言相比,用户更愿意传播恐惧谣言,尤其是带有数量来源的恐惧谣言;而当谣言类型为希望谣言时,质量来源和数量来源的谣言对用户传播意愿的影响无显著差异。研究还发现,认识天真的个体比认识强健的个体更容易传播谣言。当用户认识强健者时更愿意传播质量来源的谣言;当用户认识天真者时更愿意传播数量来源的谣言。感知健康状态较差的用户比感知健康状态较好的用户更容易传播健康谣言。高健康组的用户更愿意传播质量来源的谣言,低健康组的用户更愿意传播数量来源的谣言。

The continuous development of social media provides users with unprecedented convenient access to information. As people continue to benefit from the convenience and accessibility of social media, they are also exposed to some noisy and inaccurate information on social media, especially unconfirmed rumor information. There are often many health rumors on social media. Their wide spread will not only damage the reputation of social media platform, but also cause serious impact on individuals and society. Therefore, the research on the spread of health rumors has become a major problem to be solved urgently in academia. This paper comprehensively explores the factors affecting the spreading willingness of users from three aspects: rumor source, rumor content and rumor recipient. The experiment design was a 3(rumor source: control group vs. quantity source vs. quality source) × 2(rumor type: dread rumor vs. wish rumor) between-subjects design, and the epistemic belief and perceived health status were measured. The experimental results show that both quantity source and quality source of health rumors can enhance the individual’s spreading willingness, and there is no significant difference between them. In addition, users are more willing to spread dread rumors than wish rumors, especially dread rumors with quantity sources. When rumors are wish rumors, there is no significant difference between quality sources and quantity sources. The experiment also finds that epistemologically naive individuals are easier to spread rumors than epistemologically robust individuals. When users are epistemologically robust people, they are more willing to spread rumors with quality sources;when users are epistemologically naive people, they are more willing to spread rumors with quantity sources. Furthermore, the experiment shows that users with poor perceived health status are more likely to spread health rumors than those with better perceived health status. Users in the high health group are more willing to spread rumors of quality sources, while users in the low health group are more willing to spread rumors of quantity sources.