Exploring the multidimensional relationships between social media support, social confidence, perceived media credibility and life attitude during the COVID-19 pandemic

Previous literature mainly focuses on the impact of social media support on social trust, emotional effect and life attitude, and affirmed the social governance value of social media support. However, the multidimensional relationship between social media support and social confidence, perceived media credibility and life attitude during the COVID-19 pandemic is an important, yet less explored, research issue. The present research aimed to fill in this gap by a survey of 1343 participants who are permanent residents aged 18 and above in a city through WeChat social networking platform. The results showed that: (1) social media support exerted direct influence on social confidence, perceived media credibility and life attitude; (2) perceived media credibility positively influenced social confidence; (3) social media support not only directly promoted social confidence, but also indirectly influenced social confidence through public’s perceived media credibility. These findings suggested that strengthening social media support during the COVID-19 pandemic is not only helpful to reconstitute the public’s confidence in prevailing against the pandemic, but also is able to help promote the diversification of the power of public network autonomy. This study highlighted social media support as an effective path to improve the ability of social governance.