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

Min-Quan CHAI Qian-qian TIAN Xian JianWang

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2020, Vol. 43 ›› Issue (6) : 1411-1417.

PDF(682 KB)
PDF(682 KB)
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2020, Vol. 43 ›› Issue (6) : 1411-1417.

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

  • Min-Quan CHAI1,Qian-qian TIAN2,Xian JianWang3,3
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Abstract

At present, the situation of doctor-patient relationship in China is not optimistic. Many scholars believe that the media, especially the network media, have a profound impact on the perception of hospitals and doctors. However, few people have studied the mechanism of the influence of netizens' comments on doctor-patient relationship, let alone the cross-influence of online media reports and comments on doctor-patient relationship. Therefore, in order to clarify the mechanism of the influence of online media reports on doctor-patient trust, two experiments were conducted to explore how the consistency of network media reports and comments affects the audience's tendency to trust doctors. Two experiments using non-students 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 audience's tendency to trust doctors. Experiment 2 adds a 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 audience's 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 audience's tendency to trust doctors alone. However, the three factors interact with the audience's tendency to trust doctors. Specifically, under the condition of positive report, especially when the direction of comment is negative, the factual comment content has a more negative impact on the audience's tendency to trust doctors than the emotional comment. For negative reports, subjects who read emotional positive comments had a higher tendency to trust doctors than those who read emotionally neutral comments.This study can make up for the blank of previous studies, enrich the theory of media reporting and doctor-patient trust, and have practical significance in building doctor-patient trust.

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Min-Quan CHAI Qian-qian TIAN Xian JianWang. The Impact and Mechanism of Online Coverage -Comment on Doctor-patient Dispute on Audience's Tendency to Trust Doctors[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2020, 43(6): 1411-1417
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