The Public Discourse Power In The Mediated Crisis

With China’s entry into the advanced media society,the mediated crisis is becoming more and more serious.Compared with the traditional crisis,the expanding damage of the mediated crisis has a deeper threat to the society.At the same time,the public has greater autonomy in the use of media,and the sources of pressure facing the crisis are more diverse."Public opinion" has become the research object of crisis and public relations in the past,but the research on public opinion has not explained why different public opinion interactions lead to different results of crisis.Therefore,only using the word "public opinion" cannot fully explain the relationship between the public and crisis.When Harrison studies the mediated crisis in the west,she finds that public discourse,which contains three dimensions of identity,legitimacy and risk,has the power to promote the orderly development of mediated crisis.Based on this,With the help of the research framework of "public power of news",this paper studies the mediated crisis in China and further explores the relationship between the public and mediated crisis.Taking a typical mediated crisis "Yu Huan case" in China as the research object,and taking Baidu News,WeChat and Microblog as data sources,this paper answers two research questions:whether there is public discourse in China’s mediated crisis and the existence degree of public discourse.The results show that the media text of "Yu Huan case" contains three dimensions of public discourse:identity,legitimacy and risk.Through the identification of the three dimensions,the public discourse divides the subject into "our side" and "the other side",endows "our side" with legitimate rationality of behavior,and requires criticism and resistance of "the other side",so as to continuously construct civil society relations and transfer value judgment.On the other hand,it is found that the identity dimension of public discourse produces positive public discourse power;the legitimacy and risk dimension of public discourse produces negative public discourse power.The positive public discourse highlights the public’s identification and maintenance of "our" group,and emphasizes the maintenance of the existing interests of civil society;the negative public discourse of legitimacy and risk highlights the dissatisfaction with the existing systems and institutions,and urgently calls for the optimization of social governance.To a certain extent,the rationality and objectivity of public discourse can help to stop the spread of rumors,curb the crisis of public opinion,and optimize social governance.Finally,this paper points out the limitations of the current research and expounds the future research direction.