Can China’s publicity departments build people’s trust by building platform government? Evidence from social media in public health emergencies

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Platform government has become an important topic in the field of digital government. However, existing research lacks empirical evidence regarding the impact of platform government, leading to unanswered key issues such as the government IT productivity paradox, the distinction between platform characteristics and digitalization characteristics, and the negative effects of platform government. Therefore, this article uses the construction of platform government by China’s publicity department on social media platforms during public health emergencies as an empirical background to examine the impact of platform government characteristics on public trust in government. To further explain the mechanisms, this article introduces two concepts: government values transmission and public values consensus. Tens of thousands of data were integrated into 1,464 governance events. Sentiment analysis and text similarity were used for variable measurement, and correlation analysis was employed for accuracy verification. The results indicate that, the platform government characteristic co-creation has a significant positive impact on public trust, while the interaction effect between co-creation and openness has a negative impact. Government values transmission and public values consensus play mediating roles. In this regard, the article analyzes reasons such as information overload, the visibility of conflicts of interest, and the substitution effect, and provides specific policy recommendations based on these factors.