Third International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

Earthquake are a frequent disaster in Taiwan. In this study, we explored if the online media’s reports of the disaster relief of the earthquakes could ascend the military trust of the public in Taiwan. We use the audience’s media attention degree, the audience’s media dependent degree, and the involvement degree as the independent variables, the risk perception of the earthquakes as the mediator, and the trust to the military as the dependent variable. By online survey(n=620), we found that all of the independent variables could predict the risk perception of the earthquakes and the public trust to the military by hierarchical regression analysis. Besides, the risk perception of the earthquakes could negatively predict the public trust to the military. Furthermore, we found the mediator effect of the risk perception of the earthquakes exists by the Sobel test. However, the reports of the disaster relief of the earthquakes of the online media could not predict the public trust to the military. It seems that if the government wants to improve the public trust to Taiwan military by disaster relief activity after the earthquakes , reporting through all kinds of media play an important role.