Research On The Mechanism Of Public Opinion Guidance Of Emergency Incidents

During the period of social transition, China is now experiencing changes from various aspects, such as politics, economy, culture, social. As the progress of reform had taken, sorts of deep contradiction is increasingly highlightened. The differentiation of social class, as well as interest groups had leaded to increasing conflicts, China now has entered into the peak season of emergency incidents. At the same time, with more awareness of democratic participation in the public, the establishment of citizens’ right to know and express by state legislation, the marketization of media organization and the rise of We media, as well as the public and harmful characteristics of emergency incidents, the public had now shown great concern about emergency incidents. The expression of public opinion on emergency incidents shows features as following:fast in both accumulation and dispersion, easy to change, long lasting impact, and the asymmetry of traditional media and new media.Public opinion on emergency incidents and the development of emergency incidents are interrelated, the guidance of public opinion not only leads to solve the incident, but also plays an important role in the development of Chinese society.This paper conducts an in-depth exploration into the mechanism of public opinion guidance of emergency incidents under existing Chinese political environment, media environment and condition of democratic participation. With its logic start point on the two subjects, i.e. government and media organization, of public opinion guidance, this paper devoted its efforts mainly on analysis of the possibility and meaning of dialogue between the two subjects and its object-the public, and how to realize cooperation of subjects on the basis of dialogue.On the other hand, this paper also introduced the theory of program execution to explain various aspe ts as the monitoring and early warning of public opinion on emergency incidents, cooperation of public opinion guides, capability assessment of public opinion guidance, legal protection, the improvement of media literacy of government, media organization and the public, etc. trying to build a systematic and improved mechanism of public opinion guidance of emergency incidents.At the beginning, the characteristics of public opinion on emergency incidents, as well as the bias of public opinion guidance on emergency incidents had been depicted, then it pointed out the principles of guiding public opinions on emergency incidents are: be aware of guiding rather than controlling; with the goal of harmony rather than homogeneity; with the methods of paying equal attention to solve incident and guide public opinion; with timely, truthful and open communication; as well as positive guidance rather passive.Analyzing the mechanism of public opinion guidance on emergency incidents through its procedure, we found the monitoring and early warning of public opinion on emergency incidents is the basis of public opinion guidance. In the third chapter, the construction and working mechanism of organizations handling the monitoring and early warning of public opinion on emergency incidents, the collection and analysis of public opinion, the personnel of public opinion monitoring and early warning, as well as the setting of criteria on judgement and early warning of public opinion had been discussed.The fourth chapter is the core of this paper. Government, media organizations and the public has different status as well as impact on the public opinion guidance on emergency incidents. As a guide of public opinion with higher status, government should play an active role, and try to make up the information asymmetry once an incident broke out. While the coverage of emergency incidents from media organization could also relieve the incident. And the public, as the object of guiding practice, whether its interests or appeal be satisfied or not finally determines the effect of public opinion guidance. As an interpersonal communication, dialogue is a negotiation based on openness and mutual trust, thus it is an effective way to guide public opinion if it could be established between government and media organization and the public.Through investigation of how the media organization guide public opinion and then the perception of the audience, this paper pointed out the cooperation between subjects of guiding is insufficient, and at last established a cooperation mechanism between subjects based on mutual dialogue, which including cooperation between government departments, government and media organizations, and different organizations.Moreover, the mechanism of public opinion guidance on emergency incidents can’t run without assessment, legal protection and media literacy. This paper had set an capability index of public opinion guidance for government departments and the media organizations respectively. For government departments, there are9secondary indicators and31tertiary indicators from three main perspectives as the monitoring and early warning of public opinion, the response capability to public opinion, the guiding effect of public opinion. And for media organizations, there are7secondary indicators and21tertiary indicators from three main perspectives as familiarity, coverage, the guiding effect of public opinion, all of the indicators are explained in detail. Also, an analysis of current legal system had been conduct from three aspects as accountability, information release, and information release through internet, with suggestion being proposed.At the end of the paper, it intended that education on media literacy is the important method to improve the capability of guiding public opinion on emergency incidents, the improvement of media literacy of government departments, media organizations and the public will provide a positive and effective protection to the operating mechanism of public opinion guidance on emergency incidents.