The Crisis Communication With Government And Media In Public Crisis Management

In this era when the whole international society is in turbulence and the domestic social structure is undergoing drastic changes, crisis has already become part of our lives. Both the outburst and impact of crisis come out in different forms and scope, along with the globalization of economy. Comparing with that in the past, the crisis nowadays is embedded with several unique attributes: globality, unpredictability and openness. Public crisis is especially eye-catching due to its breadth and profound effect. Thus, how to effectively manage public crisis becomes an important subject to evaluate governance capability.China is experiencing a significant transformation now. A number of social problems have the tendency to be aggravated with the rapid growth of economy. Regional or nationwide public crisis could be triggered by some emergencies. How to deal with these public crises in an effective, timely and amicable way has become the important issue that governments of all levels have to pay more attention in a certain period from now on. Government undoubtedly is the main body in public crisis management, while proper communication is the core of crisis management. Media, as a social utility, has compelling obligation to effectively prevent and control public crisis. In fact, proper intervention of media is an effective way to resolve the crisis. In this paper, we study the impact of government and media communication and response on effective control and resolution of crisis during the public crisis management process.From the experiences of dealing with crisis in different countries, we can draw the conclusion that effective communication plays a vital role. In another word, the publicity and transparency of information throughout the whole crisis management process is extremely important. Fear and panic will spread over the whole society once the crisis happens. Even the rational dialogue and analysis will be ignored at that time. So it becomes extremely important to release and evaluate information in an objective way. Being the most authoritative information promulgator, government could control and guide the public opinion through good communication with the media, which is critical to solve the crisis. Without the effective communication and releasing the fact in an appropriate and objective way through media, it could result in serious aftermath and loss because of the social Chaos caused and missing the best timing to solve crisis. Furthermore, it could damage the image of "responsible government" and pose a negative impact on the government "credibility". Such a consequence will directly jeopardize the stability and development of the country's politics and economy, even the life and death of the regime.The research showed that the crisis communication process dealing with the government and the media has been penetrated into the public crisis management system supported by the Crisis Development Theory and Chaos Theory. The paper focused on the comparison of the current situation of the crisis communication by Chinese government with different countries, and deeply analyzed the communication experience between government and media during the SARS crisis. The research revealed some deep-rooted problems of the communication between government and media in the current stages and situation of the Chinese Public Crisis Management System. It is also indicated that the further development of the crisis communication process is undergo by the government dealing with the media.