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Cited by 44Media Studies and CommunicationMisinformation and Its ImpactsJournalism and Media Studies

Trust in online news: comparing social media and official media use by chinese citizens

Wang, Yiran, Mark, Gloria·2013·Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work
DOI 10.1145/2441776.2441843
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Abstract

Since 2006 social media use has grown dramatically in China. Social media has become a stage for citizens to report and disseminate news and to vocalize viewpoints, at times competing with reports from highly curated official media sources. These competing news channels, oftentimes presenting contradictory information, raise questions about citizens' trust in these different media. This study explores the level of trust Chinese Internet users place on news from social media versus official media. We conducted a large-scale anonymous survey in China that revealed that official and citizen news attract different audience groups and each group uses different features to assess news trustworthiness. We present a model for predicting preference for news from citizen media. The results reveal features of social media that explain why some citizens trust it as a channel for news. The results also suggest that in highly regulated news environments, citizen media has the potential to become an alternative news channel where citizens can trust each other for information.

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Crossref · 10.1145/2441776.2441843

Cites

29 of 29 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

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Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Presenting information alongside the URL of the original source significantly increases people's trust in that information.

    “In a number of studies, transparency has involved presenting information alongside the URL of the original source, which signifcantly increased people's trust in that information [5,13,24,25,40,109].”

    From What Do We Mean When We Talk about Trust in Social Media? A Systematic Review (2023) · cites this paper as [109]

  • Social credibility increases individuals' trust in information found on social media.

    “According to a few studies in our corpus, this is because social credibility increases individuals' trust in information found on social media [4,109].”

    From What Do We Mean When We Talk about Trust in Social Media? A Systematic Review (2023) · cites this paper as [109]

  • Social ties are a significant trust antecedent, though one study disagreed.

    “Three studies in our corpus suggested that social ties were a signifcant trust antecedent [34,34,109], whereas one study in our corpus disagreed [26].”

    From What Do We Mean When We Talk about Trust in Social Media? A Systematic Review (2023) · cites this paper as [109]

  • Participants' trust towards information on social media is directly correlated with the social ties between the participant and the profile that posted the information.

    “Wang et al. found that participants' trust towards information on social media is directly correlated with the social ties between the participant and the profle that posted the information [109].”

    From What Do We Mean When We Talk about Trust in Social Media? A Systematic Review (2023) · cites this paper as [109]

  • People hold different levels of trust in each social media platform.

    “Prior work comparing trust across different social media platforms has collectively suggested that people hold diferent levels of trust in each platform [19,27,77,109].”

    From What Do We Mean When We Talk about Trust in Social Media? A Systematic Review (2023) · cites this paper as [109]

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Authors
Wang, Y., & Mark, G.
Affiliations
University of California, Irvine (US)
ORCID
Venue
Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work
Publisher
ACM
Published
2013-02-23
Pages
599-610
DOI
10.1145/2441776.2441843
OpenAlex
W2051028860
Cited by
44
References
29
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 3 · 2013: 2
FWCI
5.61
Type
conference paper
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.acm.org/publications/policies/copyright_policy#Background (vor)
Locations
ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) (publishedVersion)
Funders
National Science Foundation
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Communication › Media Studies and Communication
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
  • Social Sciences › Communication › Journalism and Media Studies
Keywords
trust in news, social media news, citizen journalism, official media, news reliability, audience segmentation, media regulation, Chinese internet users

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