不对称的螺旋：媒体情绪与通胀预期传染

Asymmetric Spirals:Media Sentiments and Epidemiology of Inflation Expectations

本文首次将传播学领域"沉默的螺旋"理论与流行病学传染机制作为统一的理论基础,应用于通胀预期的传染机制研究,分析两类不同新闻媒介(纸质和网络)关于物价变化的报道对通胀预期的传染效应。我们通过人工阅读印刷版资料和电子数据库资料,甄别、区分并统计出2001-2012年各月份媒体报道中涨价、降价和中性三种不同报道的量化指标,进而构建和估计媒体报道对通胀预期的动态传染模型。研究表明,不同媒体报道不仅可以形成不同方向的"意见气候",而且"意见气候"的传染强度也显著不同,从而形成"不对称的螺旋"。这种非对称性在传统纸媒和网媒上的表现截然相反:纸媒的降价报道对公众预期的传染性相对更强,而网媒的涨价报道则具有更强的传染性,这种局面值得关注。

From the perspective of ＂spiral of silence＂ theory in communication science and contagion mechanism theory in epidemiology, we construct an analytical framework for the transmission mechanism of inflation expectations to explore the contagion effects of media sentiments on inflation expectations. The sentiments of paper and network media are identified by reading printing materials and searching database pools, and then we classify media sentiments as positive, neutral and negative, which are recorded monthly from 2001 to 2012. Based on the analytical framework, different responses of inflation expectations to different media sentiments are estimated. The empirical results suggest that different media sentiments evolve into diverse climate of opinion with varying levels of contagion intensity, giving rise to ＂asymmetric spirals＂. It is worthy that the asymmetry varies with different types of news carrier. The contagion effect of deflation reports in paper media on inflation expectations is relatively stronger, while that of inflation reports in network media is relatively stronger.