医患纠纷的网络报道-评论对受众对医信任倾向的影响与机制

The Impact and Mechanism of Online Coverage-Comment on Doctor-Patient Dispute on Audience’s Tendency to Trust Doctors

研究通过2个实验,选取非医务工作者被试,考察网络媒体报道和在线评论对医患关系的影响机制。发现媒体报道方向、评论方向及评论内容的性质并不单独对受众的对医信任倾向产生显著影响。但三者的三重交互效应以及报道方向和评论内容性质的两重交互作用显著。具体而言,在正向报道条件下,尤其当评论方向为负向时,事实性的评论内容比情绪性的评论更能对受众的对医信任倾向产生消极影响。对于负向报道,阅读情绪性正向评论的被试比阅读情绪性中性评论的被试具有更高的对医信任倾向。研究结果发展了媒体传播理论和医患关系的社会舆论领域的研究,对于构建和谐医患关系具有实践指导意义。

At present, the situation of doctor-patient relationship in China is not optimistic. Many scholars believe that media, especially the network media, have a profound impact on the perception of doctors. However, few scholars have studied the mechanism of the influence of netizens’ online comments on doctor-patient relationship, let alone the cross-influence of online media coverage and comments. Therefore, in order to clarify the mechanism of the influence of online media coverage on doctor-patient trust, two experiments were conducted to explore the cross-influence of the two on the audiences’ tendency of trust in doctors. Combined with relevant studies, we hypothesize that the media reporting direction, comment direction and comment content of doctor-patient disputes significantly affect the audience’s tendency to trust doctors, and the three also have a significant interactive effect on the audiences’ tendency to trust doctors.Two experiments using non-medical workers as subjects were conducted in this research. A three(coverage direction: positive/neutral/negative) × three(comment direction: positive/neutral/negative) between-subjects design was used in Experiment 1 which investigated the cross-influence of media coverage direction and network comment direction on the audiences’ tendency to trust doctors. Experiment 2 added variables(the nature of comment(factuality-emotion)) on the basis of Experiment 1 to further explore the relationship between the content of comments and the audiences’ trust in doctors. In both experiments, the subjects were randomly assigned to one experimental condition. In order to verify the authenticity of the experimental materials, we invited 30 students to conduct a pre-test, mainly to verify whether they doubted the authenticity of the experimental materials. The results showed that no one disbelieved those.The results of these two experiments showed that the direction of media reporting, the direction of comment and the nature of comment content did not affect the audiences’ tendency to trust doctors alone. However, the three factors interacted with the audiences’ tendency to trust doctors. Specifically, under the condition of positive report, especially when the direction of comment was negative, the factual comment content had a more negative impact on the audiences’ tendency to trust doctors than the emotional comment. For negative coverage, subjects who read emotional positive comments had a higher tendency to trust doctors than those who read emotionally neutral comments. In sum, the results of both experiments suggested that audiences’ tendency to trust doctors was influenced by media coverage and online reviews rather than a single factor. Moreover, the impact of online comments on the audience depended more on the nature of the content of the comments than on comments direction. In addition, the results also showed that the audiences paid more attention to online commentary information which was inconsistent with the direction of media reporting. Under the condition of positive reporting, negative online comments could significantly affect the audiences’ perception and attitude towards doctorpatient disputes. Only when negative comments had factual arguments could they have a negative impact on the audiences’ tendency to trust doctors. However, under the condition of negative coverage, positive emotional online comments could significantly weaken the negative effect of negative coverage on the audiences’ trust in doctors, which meant that when facing negative coverage of doctor-patient disputes, the audience paid more attention to emotional refutation information rather than factual evidence and logical argument. This study can make up for the blank of previous studies, enrich the theory of media coverage and doctor-patient trust, and have practical significance in building doctor-patient trust.