The Research On Public Crisis Management And Government Image-building In Social Transition

Crisis disturbs people’s normal life, causing a great threat to the economic development andsocial order, and sometimes even causing the loss of the legitimacy of the government, thus, whether thegovernment can effectively cope with and resolve the crisis has become one of the most important criteriafor testing the administrative capacity of the government. In recent years, with the deepening of reform, ourcountry has entered the key period of economic transition and social transformation, however, during thisperiod, the conflict between the growth of population and the consumption of resources and the destructionof environment has been intensified, which result in frequent public crises, thus, the importance of publiccrisis management is further highlighted. However, as a very state of management, in the state of publiccrisis, the public understanding of the image of the government is not stable and the expectations on thegovernment is also increasing, which will have a negative effect on the achieved image of government anddamage and destruct the image of the government to different degrees. This requires the government notonly to establish a complete and efficient public crisis management system, but also to attach greatimportance to the construction of the government image—the modern image of dealing with crisis. In thepractice of the current public crisis management, through perfecting the relevant laws and regulations andthe mechanism of public crisis management, China has gradually strengthened its management in thepublic crisis and achieved certain accomplishments. However, it is undeniable that, due to the insufficientunderstanding of the relationship between public crisis management and government image shaping, andtheir mutual influence, especially the lack of analysis of the impact and challenges imposed by public crisismanagement on the government image shaping under the background of social transition, at present, thereare many deficiencies for the Chinese government in building its image in the public crisis management.Therefore, based on the analysis mentioned above, This paper aims to comprehensively elaborate therelationship between the public crisis management and the government image shaping, the special natureof public crisis during the period of social transformation, and the new challenges of governmentimage-building caused by the public crisis management. Then, on the basis of this comprehensiveelaboration, this paper continues to talk about the deficient performance of government in shaping its image in the public crisis management, to analyze its reasons, and offer some suggestion in shaping the image ofthe government in public crisis management.Based on the ideas mentioned above, this paper is divided into five parts: the introduction partmainly analyzes the significance of the selected topic, reviews the relevant literature, and points out theresearch methods and the structure of the paper; the first chapter defines the core concepts of this paper,and elaborates the theoretical foundation about the public crisis management and government imageshaping; the second chapter mainly discusses the research foundation of the public crisis management andthe government image-building in the period of social transformation. This discussion is based on twoaspects: the mechanism and characteristics of China’s public crisis during social transition, and the newchallenges facing to the government image-building in the public crisis management,; the third chapteranalyzes the deficient performance on government image-building in the public crisis management and itsreasons; the fourth chapter offers suggestions for China’s government in building its image in the publiccrisis management from four aspects: the government image planning, the governmental construction ofpublic crisis management, the government emergency management mechanism, and the government crisismanagement ability.