中国网民的意识形态立场及其形成——一个实证的分析

本文以4 000多份网民的调查问卷数据为依据，对中国公众的“左”“右”意识形态立场的现状、特征及其起源进行了分析。研究发现，中国“左”“右”派网民与西方国家的“左”“右”派在基础性政治心理特性上恰好相反，中国的“左派”相对于右派而言，具有更为显著的威权人格特征，也更倾向于维护现有社会秩序和传统价值，在对外态度上更为强硬和排外。右派比“左派”更关注社会公平、限制公权力和赞同后现代价值。从信息接触和政治心理两个理论视角进行分析后发现，媒体影响和威权人格对网民意识形态立场的形成均有明显影响。笔者认为，在新媒体时代，随着信息源日益多元，相对于外在的信息而言，个体内在的威权人格对个人意识形态立场形成的影响可能会更强。

Chinese Netizens' Political Ideology and Their Sources:An Empirical Analysis

The article offers an empirical analysis of the characteristics and sources of the ideological positions of Chinese netizens based on an on line questionnaire survey of over 4000 Internet users. Firstly, we set up a criterion for classifying netizens’ political ideology into “left” and “right”. Then, we analyze leftist and rightist netizens’ psychological traits such as authoritarian personality and their attitudes towards patriotism, nationalism, foreign policy, extant social political order, and traditional and post modern values. Our analysis finds that, left wing and right wing netizens in China are opposite to their namesakes in Western countries in basic political psychological traits. Specifically, Chinese “leftists” are similar to conservatives in Western countries. They possess more authoritarian personality traits and are more inclined to defend the extant social order and traditional values than the rightists. Furthermore, they are more hawkish and xenophobic on foreign affairs issues. The Chinese “rightists”, by contrast, are similar to liberals in Western countries. They are more concerned about social justice and setting limits to political power, and support postmodern values. We also analyze the sources of Chinese netizens’ political ideology through two theoretical approaches: information sources and individual’s personality. We find that netizens’ political ideology is significantly affected by both media exposure as an external factor and authoritarian personality as an internal factor, but the influence of the latter is more powerful. Based on our findings, we argue that while both media exposure and authoritarian personality have impacts on an individual’s political ideology, authoritarian personality is the more fundamental factor than information in influencing the individual’s ideological position in the new media age when information sources are increasingly diversified. Therefore, policies and strategies that try to influence the public’s ideological placement by controlling the ideological orientations of the media can only have limited effect.