社会认同如何影响国际传播:一项改善美国民众对华态度的实证研究

The Impact of Social Identification on International Communication Practices: A Social Identity Perspective

国际传播的最终目的是增进海外民众对中国的了解,提升其对中国的好感。研究以社会认同理论为立足点,整合四种改善群际关系的具体路径,并将其有效嵌入国际传播实践的效果研判中。在研究方法上,本文采用媒体与心理学实验,通过亚马逊旗下的众包平台MTurk招募美国民众(样本量N=543)参与实验,对提出的四种传播策略进行效度检验。研究发现,四种改善群际关系的传播策略均能显著提升美国民众对中国的好感。本文以实验法明晰因果关系,为考察中国国际传播效果提供实证检验与支撑。

Based on theories and concepts from intergroup relations research, the present study develops four approaches to improve American people’s opinion towards China, including constructing a shared identity, countering stereotype, extended intergroup contact and imaged intergroup contact. This study integrates the four approaches into international communication practices, and evaluates their effectiveness through media experiments(N=543) conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Our results demonstrate that the four methods could significantly promote US people’s positive attitudes toward China. Building on these insights, this study contributes to a systematic examination of different epistemic means to influence international opinion towards China — an urgent task in the face of the infodemic threat apparent both during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.