Institutional Dissolution and Relationship Compensation: Reconstruction of Media Trust among the Middle-Aged and Elderly People under the Domestication of Online Communities

GUO Junjun; FENG Ke

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Chinese Journal of Journalism & Communication ›› 2026, Vol. 48 ›› Issue (1) : 124-144.

Institutional Dissolution and Relationship Compensation: Reconstruction of Media Trust among the Middle-Aged and Elderly People under the Domestication of Online Communities

GUO Junjun ,
FENG Ke

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Abstract

The prevalence of digital technology is profoundly reshaping the media trust structure of middle-aged and elderly people. Based on the theory of technology domestication and using data from the 2021 China Social Survey, this study empirically examines the impact of online communities on media trust among middle-aged and elderly people in China, as well as its heterogeneity. It also delves into the underlying mechanisms and the differential impacts of various types of online communities. The study finds that: firstly, online communities participation significantly weakens trust in media among middle-aged and elderly people, and this negative effect intensifies with age and the absence of intergenerational support, but social networks can mitigate this effect. Secondly, technology domestication operates through dual pathways of “institutional authority deconstruction” and “trust compensation relationship reconstruction”. The former, with the decline of political trust as an intermediary, intensifies the loss of media trust, while the latter improves media trust through enhanced social evaluation, forming a partial masking effect revealing cognitive adaptation characteristics of authority dilution and relationship proliferation. Thirdly, there are differential impacts among types of online communities, with utilitarian communities significantly eroding media trust, whereas relational and interest-based communities have no significant effect on media trust. The findings suggest that media trust reconstruction among middle-aged and elderly people is not a non-linear replacement, but rather the result of a dynamic game between institutional authority and relational trust, highlighting the important impact of the dialectical interaction between algorithmic logic and social logic on the construction of media trust systems in the process of technological domestication.

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Network communities / media trust / technology domestication

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GUO Junjun , FENG Ke. Institutional Dissolution and Relationship Compensation: Reconstruction of Media Trust among the Middle-Aged and Elderly People under the Domestication of Online Communities[J]. Chinese Journal of Journalism & Communication. 2026, 48(1): 124-144

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Footnotes

1. 所选择的匹配变量为年龄和受教育程度。

2. CSS2021问卷的问题C4a中，详细询问了受访者2020年全家的通讯支出（如固定电话/手机的话费、上网费等），文中对支出数额进行了对数处理。

3. CSS2021中，社交网络强度根据问题D3b_1受访者是否同意“我感觉跟自己圈子/群体里的人关系非常好”进行测度，经处理后的答案选项包括“1.很不同意；2.不太同意；3.比较同意；4.非常同意”，数值越大，表明社交网络强度越高。

4. 参照Zhai（2018）的做法，采用政治价值观对民众的政治信任进行度量，对应CSS2021问卷中的问题为“H6a_9. 您是否同意老百姓应该听从政府的，下级应该听从上级的”，原始答案选项包括“很不同意”“不太同意”“比较同意”“非常同意”以及“不知道”五个类别，将“不知道”视为缺失值予以剔除，其他则从1到4顺次赋值，数值越大代表政治信任越高。

5. 对应CSS2021问卷中的问题为“G6. 总体来说，您对现在社会的评价”，原始答案选项包括1~10的不同分数，1分表示非常不好，10分表示非常好，分数越高代表对现在社会的评价越好。

Funding

National Social Science Fund of China(22BZX037)

Innovative Exploration Project of China West Normal University for the Year 2025(25SA002)

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