Media's Strategies to Deal with Public Emergencies

Media's Strategies to Deal with Public Emergencies

With the advent of the Internet age, it has become simple and quick for people to obtain all kinds of information, which has brought new challenges to media news reports.

As the carrier of news information resources, the media is an important part of the social emergency system during the crisis, and it is an institution that performs and participates in the crisis management function.

News reports in public emergencies should play the role of crisis public relations from the perspectives of public opinion guidance, in-depth reporting and image building to resolve the negative impact of public crisis.

Keywords: media coping strategies for public emergencies

I. Emergency and its characteristics

Famous American scholar Robert? Heath discusses in his crisis management. Public emergencies refer to public emergencies that have great threats and damages to national security, social security, public order and the safety of citizens' lives and property, resulting in heavy casualties, property losses and social impact, and urgently need to make quick decisions? .

On June 8, 2006, the State Council issued "National Overall Emergency Plan for Public Emergencies", pointing out that public emergencies are emergencies that occur suddenly and may cause heavy casualties, property losses, ecological environment damage and serious social harm, endangering public safety.

The Emergency Response Law of People's Republic of China (PRC), which came into effect on June 1 65438+1October/KLOC-0, 2007, classifies emergencies into natural disasters, accidents, public health incidents and social security incidents.

In short, emergencies are crisis events involving the protection of public interests. As long as the content of the incident is seriously related to the preservation and maintenance of life, property and credit, which are the core elements of the survival and development of an orderly society, it can be called an emergency.

Professor Tong Bing pointed out in the preface to the Emergency Report:? For a long time, domestic emergency news reports lack practice, the theoretical construction lags behind, there are various misunderstandings in the understanding and management of emergency reports by mass media, and there is no scientific mechanism to deal with emergency reports. ? This passage can sum up some disadvantages in media news reports.

At present, China is in the period of social transformation, and the frequency of public emergencies is getting higher and higher.

Improving the ability to deal with emergencies has become a major issue for media organizations, party committees, governments and functional departments at all levels.

There are many kinds of public emergencies with different degrees of harm.

But these public events all have some common characteristics.

1. Suddenness: Some public events are sudden and unpredictable, which can be divided into human factors and natural factors.

No matter human or natural factors, emergencies are uncertain, and there is no early warning before, so it is necessary to establish a perfect public emergency system.

Second, universality: the negative impact of public emergencies is very extensive. On the one hand, it brings loss of life and property to individuals or families, and it also brings heavy losses to people's hearts.

On the other hand, it has a great impact on the security and stability of the country and society, which is not conducive to the development of the country and the region. Therefore, it is necessary to establish various alliance organizations among countries, regions and ethnic groups in the world to eliminate the psychological impact of emergencies on people.

Thirdly, complexity: once an emergency happens, it will cause a series of chain reactions, which requires the cooperation of all departments, not only scientific classification management, but also mutual coordination and communication, establishing systematic and scientific countermeasures and building a new image of the media.

In view of the above characteristics of public emergencies, the news media should adopt coping strategies from the perspectives of public opinion guidance, in-depth reporting and image building, play the role of crisis public relations, and make contributions to the stability and harmony of our society and the health of public opinion.

Second, the media response to emergencies strategy

1, public opinion guidance

The role of the media is to upload and distribute information and communicate.

Media is the disseminator of information, and its dissemination has both positive and negative effects.

On the one hand, the media has strengthened people's contact and communication by constantly transmitting various political, economic and cultural information to people, and also opened a window for people to understand the outside world.

On the other hand, due to the competition among media and the pursuit of profits and eyeballs, the reporting environment of the media is not necessarily the same as the real environment, which may provide the audience with wrong information, mislead the audience and bring greater harm.

Shortly after the Wenchuan earthquake, a TV station launched a campaign entitled "Should teachers escape in the earthquake?" This discussion seems to have caught the social hot spot. In essence, such a discussion is not only harmful to the display of words and deeds of uniting the earthquake relief forces on the mass platform, but also brings negative effects to the promotion of human values.

In the face of emergency reports, especially in the case of asymmetric information, the media should give full play to the role and function of public opinion carrier and grasp the initiative of information release, so as to grasp the initiative of public opinion.

Therefore, it is necessary to:

First, respond quickly and send out the voice guided by mainstream media public opinion in time.

Without timely follow-up and guidance, the government will be speechless in emergencies, which will open the door for inaccurate reports and popular rumors.

To this end, the media should grasp the right to speak at the first time, announce the facts, and minimize the spread space of rumors and negative information.

Second, strengthen humanities reporting.

After the Wenchuan earthquake, CCTV and local radio and television media reported the disaster in an open way. This way of reporting disasters, making information public, breaking rumors and rallying people's hearts shows China's people-oriented ruling philosophy and the media's sense of social responsibility.

Third, set the agenda.

When emergencies break out, social hot spots and focus issues are relatively concentrated, and public opinion is everywhere.

The mainstream media should set a reporting agenda according to the continuous development of the situation, report objectively and fairly, fully satisfy the people's right to know, so as to attract the audience to the mainstream position of public opinion, and at the same time grasp the hot spots, difficulties, focuses and key links of emergencies, skillfully combine the concerns of the government and the people, form a benign information interaction, and give play to the guiding role of media public opinion.

Fourth, effective media linkage.

Strengthen the joint interaction between traditional media and new media, that is, give play to the advantages of fast communication speed and high authority of traditional media, complement each other to build a three-dimensional communication platform, and realize the optimal combination of public opinion guidance.

Second, in-depth reporting.

American psychologist G.W. allport believes that in a society, the circulation of rumors (R) is directly proportional to the product of the importance of the problem (I) and the fuzziness of the evidence involved in the problem (A), that is, R=IA? .

This formula shows that the lack of evidential information from formal channels and the increasingly vague situation will prompt people to seek information through gossip channels.

This shows that the media must release real and influential voices to the audience in order to curb the spread of bad information.

However, some news media in China often deviate from their responsibilities and reporting principles in social practice.

Therefore, strengthening in-depth reporting, observing news professional ethics and strengthening media self-discipline are the ways for media to survive and develop under the market economy system.

At present, people's superficial understanding of emergencies can no longer be satisfied, which requires in-depth coverage by mainstream media.

Through in-depth explanatory, analytical and investigative reports, dig out the ins and outs of things.

1, explanatory report

Refers to reports that provide news background and explain or analyze relevant news facts. Mainly answer why unexpected events happen, tell the audience the significance and cause and effect of news facts, and sort out and explain complex events.

Publish open, accurate, comprehensive and authoritative information at the first time, obtain first-hand information on the basis of field visits, so as to make the theme, content and form of the report conform to the objective reality, and explain single and isolated events to the audience through more factual reports, so as to make the reporting object and interview environment conform to the objective reality.

2. Analysis report

It is a kind of report that increases the news background to reveal a deeper level and make the event easy to understand.

For newspaper media, analytical reporting has more advantages, and the advantage of newspaper media is depth, which is carried out in all directions through meticulous carving and deep excavation.

? 9? 1 1? When the incident happened, Americans spent the first day in front of the TV set, but they were reading the newspaper the next day.

From the sociological point of view, the living environment of contemporary people is becoming more and more complex, and new knowledge, new situations, new phenomena and new problems are emerging one after another, which makes people often at a loss in the face of massive information, and always needs a calm voice to let them know not only what happened, but also why? How did it happen? What does this mean? Whether it affects their lives and so on.

According to statistics, about 70% of the information disseminated is not released by professional media organizations, but is increasingly active? Blog? And then what? Podcast? .

Where is the value of the media? Obviously not simple? The truth? Provide, but need them to explain the facts of professional logical methods, expand the perspective of facts, combined with the structure of facts. Readers need not only information (news information), but also theory? Media views and opinions.

3. Investigation report

Investigative reporting has three core characteristics: one is to defend public interests or civil rights.

When an emergency happens, citizens have the right to know the truth of the incident and ask the media to report the cause of the incident truly and truly.

The second is to expose the shady.

Nothing happens by accident. Journalists are required to observe keenly, conduct in-depth interviews and make systematic and detailed reports on emergencies.

The third is the independent investigation of journalists.

On June 5438+February 5, 2003, a serious mine disaster broke out in Linfen, Shanxi. CCTV's Focus Interview tracks mine accidents and conceals the truth. After a lot of interviews and investigations, the reporter exposed the truth behind the mine disaster and let some corrupt officials fall. This program has also become the representative work of investigative reporting in China, making investigative reporting the main form of modern news media.

Third, image building.

As the spokesman of public interest, the media is playing an increasingly important role.

Therefore, the media should pay attention to self-image building and expand its influence from three angles: improving professional quality, cultivating opinion leaders and building an interactive platform.

1, the improvement of media professionalism

As communicators, media people are not only engaged in communication activities, but also need them to lead people to think and observe from a professional perspective.

In addition to having high ideological and political quality and professional ability, we must also have clear literacy of industry concept, industry viewpoint, industry spirit and industry attitude, so as to find out what can and cannot be spread, for whom, to whom and how to spread, and judge the right and wrong, good and evil, beauty and ugliness of communication behavior.

2. Cultivate opinion leaders

The purpose is to guide public opinion, including not only political guidance, but also ideological guidance, value guidance, behavior guidance and cultural guidance, which is particularly important in the network information age.

3. Build an interactive platform

When an emergency occurs, it is necessary to quickly build an information exchange platform, so that the public can know the comprehensive, authentic and authoritative emergency information in the shortest time, and realize the linkage and interaction between the media.

In short, doing a good job in the media response to emergencies can unite people's hearts and serve the audience as soon as possible, and also lay a solid public opinion foundation for the government to respond to emergencies in a timely and effective manner.

refer to

1 [America] Robert? Heath: Crisis Management, CITIC Publishing House, 200 1: 20-23.

(2) Baby Soldiers, Preface of Emergency Report, People's Daily Online.

③ Guo: A Course in Communication, Renmin University of China Press, 2005: 98 pages.

④ Gan Xifen: News Dictionary, Henan People's Publishing House, 1993: 153.