A Researcn On Dongguan Municipal Government’s Response To Negative Internet Public Opinions

The Internet in China has been developing rapidly over the years, and more and more people are getting information through the Internet, which features with the functions of information publishing, transmission of public opinions and social mobilization. Now the mobile Internet, with which the mobile phone application has become the biggest Internet terminal, has enabled the mode of mobile social network. Based on this, China has entered a real era of mobile Internet. In the meantime, we are also going through the critical period of development, the hard time of reformation as well as highlighting the social contradictions, unexpected events and sensitive topics surface from time to time; therefore, these reasons are causing more complex and changeable Internet public opinions. Thus, facing a reversible Internet development situation, local governments at different levels should unify their own actual conditions to confront the problems of dealing with Internet public opinions, analyze the causes of the problems, improve solutions to solve the problems, set up a pack of mature and effective rules and regulations to therefore enhance the administrative enforcement power and the city reputation of the local governments. Yet we are still groping to find ways of dealing with Internet public opinions, which, becomes not only a significant focus of the central government and local governments, but a research object of the academic circles.As one of the prefecture-level cities, Dongguan is an economically developed coastal area in the east of China, as well as a well-known city of manufacturing industry. Due to its special location, economical structure and population composition, Dongguan has a large amount of new information and abundant Internet public opinions, which make the city an active Internet public opinions area and a target of news-report that is highly-focused by media. Moreover, in recent years, a series of sensational Internet public opinions events took place in Dongguan, though the city is becoming more and more experienced in dealing with such events, it has not really shaped an effective work system to deal with Internet public opinions to provide instructions for primary level organizations. The result was not satisfying, and the city image was even put into an embarrassing situation in which the reputation is unworthy of the recognition, and the true image is irreconcilable with the public image. Therefore, the research on studying how Dongguan Municipal Government deals with Internet public opinions could provide some thinking and suggestions for the government to improve its leadership in dealing with such events, at the same time offers some reference and experience to other local governments, combining with their own conditions in solving similar problems.Firstly, the paper defines the concepts and theories of Internet public opinions. Secondly, based on the actual situation of Dongguan and visiting relevant departments, the author collects and collates relevant data, policies and measures to analyze twenty hot-spot Internet public opinion events that took place in Dongguan from 2006 to 2014, thus coming to a conclusion of what types of Dongguan’s Internet public opinions are and points out the challenges that the city is facing in coping with Internet public opinions. Under the current Internet development, the types of Internet public opinions of Dongguan could, from the perspective of content, be classified into the following ones: government management, social livelihood, public security, sudden events and official corruption. Now the challenges that the government is facing in dealing with Internet public opinions are:we are now in the period of contradiction protruding during the economic and social double transformation; the Internet public opinions of Dongguan is breaking out; the special location and the industrial structure are making the city Internet public opinions a big concern; the composition of the cyber citizens are large, young and complex, which involves extensive participants of Internet public opinions; highly clustered media offer sufficient topic space to the Internet public opinions; the new characteristics of Internet public opinions are challenging the management wisdom of the government; now Dongguan is still at an exploration stage of dealing with Internet public opinions. Combined with the countermeasures that Dongguan adapted in dealing with some influential Internet public opinions events, the author points out the main problems in the process which includes slow response of the official and coping with delay; unscientific countermeasures and low-level information transparency; low literacy of the leading cadres and the media and the utilization of new media remains to be improved; the aftermath of the events is inadequate. To trace the problems to its source, the main reasons that account for the problems are as follows: the monitoring sensibility of Internet public opinions is low and the government lacks anticipation and intervention; the leading cadres are weak in crisis awareness and a system of transparent information openness is lacked; the media lack cultivation of literacy and the leading cadres don’t have enough knowing of the new media; when dealing with the aftermath of the events, the government lacks an agenda setting and the government has insufficient knowing of the influence period of the Internet public opinions. Finally, according to the problems that the author researches, this paper suggests that the of Dongguan Municipal Government could manage to solve the problems from the following aspects:the comprehensive literacy in dealing with the Internet public opinions should be improved; coping mechanism of the government should be completed; management innovation should be enhanced and new channels on counseling should be opened.