1. Introduction
Russian literary critic Shklovsky once proposed that 'defamiliarization' is one of the core concepts of Russian formalism put forward by Shklovsky at the beginning of the 20th century. It is mainly through the deformation of language or the handling of skills. Defamiliarization intentionally portrays familiar things as strange things, causing people to have a sense of novelty to arouse the strong desire for aesthetics. Later, 'defamiliarization' gradually extended to the field of sociology to describe the relationship between people. In CNKI, 'defamiliarization’ is used as an entry to search. The research on defamiliarization mostly focuses on literary aspects such as language narrative and design art. Most of the research at the social level places ' defamiliarization ' in the space of offline communities, and digital media is often included as an external influencing factor. In this paper, defamiliarization is placed inside the digital space for research, and the social pain and trust construction mechanism in network communication are discussed. Through the analysis of relevant theoretical cases, it provides inspiration for people's interpersonal construction in 'virtual community', and provides a new space for the study of the relationship between digital media and interpersonal construction.
2. Theoretical background
Social pain, also known as ' social pain ' in psychology, is an important form of emotional pain. It refers to an emotional reaction when an individual perceives that his desired social connection is threatened or social relations are derogated [1]. The factors affecting social pain can be divided into internal and external frameworks. Internal factors are derived from personal traits, and external factors are derived from social support [2]. In current social research, trust crisis is an issue that cannot be evaded. Beyond limiting interactions between individuals and their assimilation into groups, it also undermines the implementation of political and legal institutions, and further acts as an obstacle to the advancement of the social economy [3]. Trust crisis is a manifestation or result of social pain. Luhmann divides trust into personal trust and system trust. System trust depends on other social system communication tools ( such as law, power, currency ) not to be abused and can continue to play a role. Qi Yalin and Li Qiulin further proposed from the perspective of media archaeology that trust is essentially a kind of mediated trust. The trust media integrates into the action network in a specific communication situation, and participates in the construction of trust semantics through its translation role, promoting the spread and expansion of trust. In the context of digital survival and even 'data-based survival', trust exists not only between people, but also between people and technology. Defamiliarization is the result of social pain and trust crisis at the social level.
3. The way and characteristics of digital media intervention in interpersonal relationships
The uniqueness of digital media has reshaped the pattern of interpersonal relationships. First, it breaks through the ' presentness ' of real communication.
It has set up a platform for people to de-field and de-time, which provides convenience for interpersonal communication, but also provides the possibility of social pain or trust crisis. In offline communication, people's eyes, movements, expressions, etc. are visible, and people can easily form a ' visible intimacy '. In the network, people are virtual and anonymous, in a state of ' lack of information '. Interpersonal communication is symbolized, and language, expressions, etc., have become tools that people can use to ' disguise reality ', which also enlarges the possibility of emotional misreading. Secondly, the crowd in the digital media space is becoming more and more stratified. Different platforms can connect groups with the same interests and hobbies by establishing group chats and groupings, which is conducive to the establishment of relationships between strangers to some extent. However, this stratification is also easy to divide strict interpersonal boundaries and form a social pattern of ' friends inside the circle and enemies outside the circle '. Even in the same circle, if individuals violate the hidden rules inside the circle, they may also form attacks inside the circle and form a situation of ' inner circle '. Third, the decentralization of digital media provides people with more space for self-disclosure. On the one hand, self-disclosure is often accompanied by the expectation of receiving feedback, and people's emotions are also affected by other people or algorithm feedback. On the other hand, this kind of self-disclosure is performable. The content on the platform is the randomness of the content, the dislocation of time and space, and the absence of the body. If a person performs a self-performance that is uncoordinated and asymmetric with reality for a long time, he or she cannot identify the true face of ' I '. Once it is broken by something in reality, the trust established in the virtual field may also collapse.
4. Interpersonal strangeness: performance and mechanism analysis
4.1. Mechanism of traditional interpersonal communication
In traditional society, self-sufficient small-scale agricultural production is dominant. This mode of production determines that people's life is relatively concentrated, and people's social interaction is based on blood and geography. Fei Xiaotong described the interpersonal pattern of this traditional society as a ' difference order pattern ', which is centered on ' oneself ', like the concentric circle ripple formed by the stone into the water, and the social relations are different with the distance from the center. The farther away, the thinner. Traditional social interaction is mostly offline ' on-site interaction '.Limited by certain time and space, people establish emotional connections through long-term, high-frequency, and easily perceived contact and interaction, and build trust through common experience and mutual support. At the same time, traditional society often has clear social norms, and the communication between people is mostly based on common social norms and role expectations. The clarity of social status, roles, family, work and other relationships makes people have a stronger sense of responsibility and obligation in communication, and cheating, inducement and other behaviors are less likely to occur. This structural guarantee constructs a relatively stable social relationship.
4.2. Analysis of the influence mechanism of digital media on interpersonal relationships
In digital media, the sense of strangeness is mainly manifested in the fact that the characteristics of digital media 's involvement in interpersonal relationships determine its multi-faceted impact on interpersonal relationships. With the popularity of social networks, digital media has gradually become an important way of personal identity representation, and the boundary of interpersonal communication has been greatly expanded. Individuals can maintain multiple social circles at the same time, and the relationship network presents the characteristics of decentralization and multi-node connections. The digital media has reconstructed the way in which the pattern of difference sequence is unfolded. The relationship weight, which was originally determined by intimacy, has partially given way to interaction frequency and information feedback speed. Digital interactive forms such as likes, comments, and forwarding have become new means of maintaining relationships, and emotional expression tends to be symbolic and instant. However, high-frequency shallow interactions tend to lead to the surface of the relationship, with more weak connections and weaker strong connections, and trust building is more dependent on impression management than long-term coexistence. The accumulation of social capital has also changed, and the visibility and influence of individuals in the network have become an important measure of relationship resources. The " black box " of the algorithm based on the technical level also makes the application of the algorithm in the public domain very easy to derive problems such as private capital dominating public power, government failure of algorithm supervision, and government trust crisis [4].
4.3. Analysis of the psychological mechanism of people in the new media environment
4.3.1. Instantness and fragmentation
Under the new media environment, the threshold for people to contact information is greatly reduced, and the influx of massive information presents a new and larger world. Due to the scattered and fragmented characteristics of information sources, users change from linear mode to non-linear cognitive splicing and integration when receiving information. Individuals tend to seek ' pleasure satisfaction ' psychologically and lack the patience to maintain in-depth communication [5]. The dissemination of information is timely, people's cognitive shaping is also real-time, and the 'abandonment cost' of interpersonal communication is also greatly reduced. Individuals do not have to pay too much emotional or economic costs for giving up a virtual relationship. In addition, the gap between real and virtual identities also aggravates the instability of the relationship, making individuals more free, vigilant and defensive about the interaction in the virtual network, and weakening people's trust connection.
4.3.2. Social comparison and anxiety mechanism
Information overload and " refined presentation " activate social comparative psychology, and interpersonal interaction shifts from equal communication to " comparison-evaluation-competition. " This kind of comparison often brings anxiety, jealousy and even self-doubt, weakening the trust and security in interpersonal relationships. In addition, the difference with others ' exquisite presentation ' may lead to a decrease in self-efficacy. When the ' exquisite presentation ' shows a trend of collectivization, it is easy to trigger the loneliness of individuals who are separated from this presentation. Similar to the example of homophonic names in the collective, homophonic names for their names have become a hobby of many young people today, and have gradually become a group representation. People who call each other homophonic names are considered to have intimate relationships, while people who are not homophonic names are automatically classified outside the circle, forming an invisible exclusion. This exclusion may be only instrumental for the people in the circle. It serves the establishment of intimate relationships, but the out-of-group may be endowed with morality, which triggers the psychological experience of rejection or marginalization.
5. Ways to rebuild trust in the new media environment
Trust is a multidimensional social phenomenon and cannot be isolated from its social and cultural contexts. Scholars primarily analyze the formation and evolution of trust from dimensions such as interpersonal relationships, government, and society [6]. In the new media environment, the reconstruction of trust is a multi-level systematic project, which must rely on the synergy of institutional arrangements, social and cultural atmosphere and individual practice. From the perspective of system and platform, improving the transparency and interpretability of algorithms, and strengthening data privacy protection and responsibility traceability mechanisms are the basic premises for building 'institutional trust'. At the social and cultural level, public opinion supervision and value guidance should play an external constraint and normative function, and provide a stable soil for the reproduction of trust relationship by advocating a true and honest communication culture and improving the public's media literacy; as for the individual level, users need to actively improve their media use ability, rationally choose and maintain high-quality relationships, set up psychological boundaries and strengthen offline interaction, so as to achieve a balance between virtuality and reality. It can be seen that only when institutional guarantee, cultural guidance and individual practice support each other can they effectively alleviate the crisis of trust in the field of digital communication and promote the development of interpersonal relationships in a more stable and healthy direction.
6. Conclusion
This paper mainly discusses the performance and formation mechanism of interpersonal defamiliarization in the field of digital media communication. It is found that the formation of ' defamiliarization ' in the field of digital media is influenced by both digital technology at the objective level and human psychology at the subjective level. The anonymity, symbolization, instrumentality, fragmentation and other characteristics of digital media and the existence of algorithm black box enlarge the possibility of interpersonal defamiliarization. At the same time, digital media amplifies the psychological effect of small exclusion behavior. People's ' pleasure satisfaction ' and social comparative psychology in the new media environment also make individuals more likely to feel isolated. This paper only analyzes the interpersonal defamiliarization in the digital media field at the macro level, and does not form a specific relationship network. Future research may build a more specific and clear social relationship network, and place the interpersonal defamiliarization in the digital field in a more logical and systematic spatial analysis.
References
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[4]. Tan Jiusheng, Fan Xiaoyun. Causes, risks and governance of algorithm ' black box ' [J]. Journal of Hunan University of Science and Technology (Social Science Edition), 2020, 23 (06): 92-99.DOI : 10.13582 / j.cnk
[5]. Liu Chang, Gong Hongcun, Cao Gaohui.The formation mechanism of user information anxiety behavior in fragmented reading context-an exploratory study based on grounded theory [J].Library information knowledge, 2021, 38 (03): 144-153.DOI : 10.13366 / j.dik.2021.03.144.
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Cite this article
Li,N. (2025). 'Interpersonal Defamiliarization': Social Pain and Trust Crisis in Relational Society - Based on Digital Media Communication Field. Communications in Humanities Research,92,25-29.
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References
[1]. Shu Min, Liu Pan, Wu Yanhong. The Existence of Social Pain: Evidence from Physiological Pain [J]. Journal of Peking University ( Natural Science Edition ), 2010, 46 ( 06 ) : 1025-1031.DOI : 10.13209 / j.0479-8023.2010.146.
[2]. Xiong Yuelei, Yellow Micron. Making Transparency: Trust Crisis and Self-certification Practice of Fan Groups [J].International Press, 2025, 47 (02): 133-152.DOI : 10.13495 / j.cnki.cjjc.2025.02.00.
[3]. Wu, F., & Zhao, L. P. (2002). The crisis and reconstruction of trust. Journal of Hubei University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), 29(4), 55-59.
[4]. Tan Jiusheng, Fan Xiaoyun. Causes, risks and governance of algorithm ' black box ' [J]. Journal of Hunan University of Science and Technology (Social Science Edition), 2020, 23 (06): 92-99.DOI : 10.13582 / j.cnk
[5]. Liu Chang, Gong Hongcun, Cao Gaohui.The formation mechanism of user information anxiety behavior in fragmented reading context-an exploratory study based on grounded theory [J].Library information knowledge, 2021, 38 (03): 144-153.DOI : 10.13366 / j.dik.2021.03.144.
[6]. Qi, G. (2003). A Sociological Analysis of the Reconstruction of "Trust" in the Transitional Period. Exploration, 5, 81-84.