Social Capital in China: An Explorative Comparison of Influences of Internet, Print, Broadcast, and Interpersonal Communication in an Emerging Civil Society

1. Social Capital
in China:
An Explorative Comparison of Influences of
Internet, Print, Broadcast, and Interpersonal
Communication in an Emerging Civil Society
Qingjiang (Q. J. ) Yao, Ph.D.,
Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Studies
Fort Hays State University

2. Decline of Social Trust in
China
 Individual Social Trust
 The Peng Yu case (2006, Nanjing).
 The Yao Jiaxin case (October 2010,
Xi’an).
 The Yueyue incident (October 2011,
Shenzhen).
 Institutional Trust
 The Guo Meimei incident.
 The fleeing of Wang Lijun and Chen
Guangcheng

3. Governmental Responses
 In September 2011, Wen, very concerned
with the moral decline, called for a
fundamental cultural and moral
reconstruction.
 The state Administration of Radio, Film
and Television started to limit
entertainment programming and promote
news and moral education contents in the
34 satellite TV stations, in effect on
January 1, 2012.
 The study aims at testing the policy
assumptions about media influences on
social capital.

4. Social Capital
From Putnam
(1995)
From Putnam
(1995)
 Social Capital
 Social trust
 Institutional
trust
 Civic
engagement

5. Communication and
Social Capital
From Putnam
(1995)
 Television as
the culprit
Displacement
hypotheses
Cultivation
studies: mean
world
syndrome
Entertainment
television use
vs.
informational
television use

6. H & RQ
 H1: In China, informational
media uses (newspaper,
broadcast, and internet) are
positively associated with
indicators of social capital.
 RQ1: Is informational personal
communication positively
associated with indicators of
social capital?

7. Method
 Data: WVS
 Variables:
 Social Capital: particularized social trust,
generalized social trust, institutional trust,
membership, petition & boycott
 Informational communication channels:
print, broadcast, internet/email,
interpersonal
 Controlling variables: life satisfaction,
religiosity, interest in politics,
demographic factors.

8. Result
 Print  generalized social trust &
membership
 Broadcast  institutional trust &
petition/boycott;  membership &
particularized social trust
 Internet  membership 
institutional trust
 Interpersonal communication 
petition & boycott
 Positively
associated
 Negatively
associated

9. Table 1 Hierarchical Multiple Regression of Particularized Social Trust

10. Table 2 Hierarchical Multiple Logistic Regression of Generalized Social Trust

11. Table 3: Hierarchical Multiple Regression of Confidence in Political Institutions

12. Discussion
Table 4: Hierarchical Multiple Regression of Association Membership

13. Table 5 Hierarchical Multiple Regression of Petition and Boycott Participation

14. Discussion
 The distortion of institutional trust in
societies such as China
 The differences between print
communication & audio-visual
communication (dual code theory)
 Function of interpersonal communication
 In a summary, the new policy may be
smart, but may not address the problem
of moral decline.