Research on the Change Mechanism of Expert Credibility of Chinese Internet Platforms from the Perspective of Cognitive Balance

Abstract: The spread of new media technologies in China has facilitated knowledge dissemination and public opinion exchange, but the COVID-19 pandemic has compounded the complexity and challenges of this process. During the pandemic, experts made frequent statements through new media, making it difficult to distinguish the truth from the truth, resulting in information overload and an increase in the burden of public cognition. Experts' forecast errors and other events lead to the public's questioning and resolution of the credibility of experts, and even produce boredom, affecting the authority of experts' remarks. This study aims to explore the causes of this phenomenon and the trend of expert credibility. It not only refines the analysis framework of the factors affecting expert credibility but also reveals the complex mechanism of expert specialization, public cognition, and event domain, providing valuable insights for understanding and improving the trust of experts in the public. By combining the cognitive balance theory, this study uses case analysis and text analysis to conduct an in-depth study on the expert videos and their comments on TikTok. The results show that there is a positive correlation between expert credibility and public attitude consistency. In addition, there is a significant negative correlation between the credibility of experts and the degree of public cognition, but the relationship between the degree of expert specialization and the scope of the event field is weak. Finally, this study proposes that diversification and information transmission characteristics should be considered to construct expert trust mechanisms in social media environments.