A Study On The Image Restoration Strategies In Police-related Public Opinion Crisis Communication

Under the background of network era,police-related public opinion crisis will easily become the focus of media coverage and can always draw much attention among the public.When police-related public opinion crisis happens,the image and authority of police departments will face severe challenges.How public police departments effectively conduct crisis communication in police-related public opinion crisis will be closely related to the maintenance and repair of their images,further affecting the orderly carrying out of their works and the stability of society.Through the research of corresponding cases of different types,this study intends to analyze how police departments use image restoration strategies when facing different types of police-related public opinion crisis at different stages of crisis communication.Furthermore,this study will discuss the priority and applicability of image restoration strategy choice regarding different types of police-related public opinion crisis under the cultural context of China.The research methods of this study include case study method,literature analysis method as well as interview and observation method.On case study method,this study will choose three typical police-related public opinion crisis events concerning Shenzhen police as research cases,to analyze the image restoration strategies adopted by Shenzhen police during the stages of crisis warning,crisis dealing and crisis repairing.On literature analysis method,this study will analyze internal documents and press releases of the police,along with relevant reports and comments from different media,with the purpose of analyzing the crisis communication and image restoration strategies used by Shenzhen police.On interview and observation method,this study will combine the semi-structured interviews with the people in charge of the propaganda departments in Guangdong Provincial Public Security Bureau,Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau and Foshan Municipal Public Security Bureau as well as the author's internship in the news section of Guangdong Provincial Public Security Bureau,to observe the crisis responding and the daily communication work of the police.The findings of this study are as follows.The image restoration strategies should be used through the entire stages of crisis warning,crisis dealing and crisis repairing.In different types of police-related public opinion crisis,certain image restoration strategies will be considered prior and necessary.Cultural context can play a certainrole in the use of image restoration strategies.Different image restoration strategies are closely related,so police departments should rationally combine the use of different image restoration strategies according to different crisis situations,in order to effectively repair their image.