With the rapid development of social networking sites, online social networks have become more and more influential on people's lives. In this background, the impact of online and offline social network tie strength (on the same person) on social attitude was discussed by a pilot study and two formal studies. In addition, the moderating role of epistemic authority in the relationship between tie strength and social attitudes was examined.In the pilot study, we measured online and offline social network tie strength and epistemic authority, as well as the attitudes on five hot-button issues including delayed retirement policy. 163 people aged 18 to 66 years answered the Social Network Questionnaire and 159 people aged 22 to 65 years answered the Social Attitude Questionnaire. Two tie strength scales (for online and offline social networks, respectively) both including four sub-dimensions were formed. In addition, a proper target social issue—delayed retirement was selected for the formal study. In the first formal study, 33 participants and their 264 ‘friends’ from 8 groups participated and their attitudes towards delayed retirement policy were measured. We employed a 2 (offline tie strength: strong vs. weak) × 2 (online tie strength: strong vs. weak) × 2 (epistemic authority: high vs. low) design. For every core person, 8 attitude agreement scores were measured as the dependent variables by calculating the absolute value of the discrepancy between the core person’s attitude and the attitudes of 8 types of ‘friends’, respectively. The within-group analysis of variance results showed that a significant main effect of offline tie strength and the interaction between offline tie strength and epistemic authority. That is, the stronger the offline tie strength was, the higher the attitude agreement between the core persons and their ‘friends’ was. Moreover, this effect was more significant when epistemic authority was low as compared to high. On the other hand, online tie strength had no direct impact on attitude agreement; however, it might indirectly enhance the attitude agreement in offline social networks. In the manipulation experiment of study 2, we still employed a 2 (offline tie strength: strong vs. weak) × 2 (online tie strength: strong vs. weak) × 2 (epistemic authority: high vs. low) design. By manipulating the ‘friend’ who recommend the interpretation materials for delayed retirement policy, we found that the online tie strength had an impact on the attitude change of delayed retirement policy. Moreover, this effect was more significant when offline tie strength was weak as compared to high. Epistemic authority has no effect on the attitude change towards delayed retirement policy.
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