On Police Crisis PR In "We Media" Context

Police crisis PR is one of the core problems which police organizations focus on andresearch on. Under this crisis-prone current risk society, successful crisis PR is necessaryguarantees which make sure police organizations adapt to the social environment and thenseek for survival and development.Crisis has its inevitability. For police organizations, crisis has deep and surface causes,internal and external causes. Correct understanding of these reasons is the premise of policecrisis PR. Crisis must be in specific spatial-temporal environment, especially, environment ofinformation dissemination has a critical impact on the success and failures of crisis PR. Thelast2or3years, the strong rise of “We Media” had changed the monopolistic situation thatinformation dissemination only in the hands of minority in the past. The popular character of“We Media” makes everyone is the producer, publisher and disseminators. Word dictatorshipbecomes littler in technology. At the same time,“We Media” is also the rumors fermentationplatform; it seizes possible opportunities to create chaos. In the “turbulence” of informationdissemination, police organizations’ successful PR not only depends on past experience, butalso need more innovative mechanism in the new media environment.In the traditional media context, police organizations have many achievements in crisisPR. Part of the achievements can cope with the new situation, part need to be modifiedaccording to the actual situation. In “We Media” context, police organizations have a lot ofdiscomfort in crisis PR. For example, lack of strategic considerations, lagging systemconstruction, lack of systematic planning and fragile PR team fighting capacity, etc. There are2reasons for these problems: getting a foggy understanding of roots of police crisis and partof police organizations along with its members are failure to deal with new media. The2issues need to be planned to be resolved gradually.Crisis includes3stages: fermentation, occurrence and extinction. In these3stages,concrete crisis PR will be different. In the fermentation stage of the crisis, policeorganizations need to cultivate awareness of early warning and pay attention to it fromstrategy height; study situation scientifically, then draw a tendentious conclusion; do a goodjob of crisis prevention and control plan, prescribe processing authorization. In the occurrencestage, police organizations should response quickly and timely. The specific strategies include: launching cyber patrol at the right moment; seeking opinion leaders and making a dialogueappropriately; the internal PR and full PR; the news spokesman system; seeking support to anindependent third party; cooperating with traditional media closely. Lastly, the extinctionstage is the perfect time to reconstruct and restore the image of police organizations, this isthe best time to turn crisis into opportunity. This stage answers mainly2questions: how torehabilitate one concrete case and how to construct the long-term mechanism of crisisresolution.