Research On The Relationship Of Opinion Leaders And Governments In Crisis Communication

During the crisis communication process, both opinion leaders and government have great influence on propagation process, which attracts many scholars’attention. Opinion leaders and governments function differently in during but always interact with each other. Based on the19typical cases analysis, this paper studied on the relationship between opinion leaders and governments and provided suggestions to promote the credibility of our government.In crisis communication process, opinion leaders play roles of crisis information discloser, information disseminator, crisis’critics and spokesman of different interest parties. Their influence is mainly through the interaction with Internet users, spreading the information to other network media as well as leading public opinion storm. By contrast, the governments mainly play roles of observing and coordinating crisis, responding crisis and providing information, guiding opinions and social mobilization, and assessing crisis recovery. The governments influence the public opinion with their function.Actually, opinion leaders broke the traditional discourse pattern, which dominated by the governments, and led to the game state of opinion leaders and governments. Two kinds of different discourse systems exist in the process of crisis communication and come to a balance in a dynamic way. Both the opinion leaders and government set agendas and guide the public opinions. From the current situations, opinion leaders and government share the same interest in general and cooperation is the main stream, forming to the mode of unity and opposites. More specifically, their relationships are in three models, that is opposing to each other, cooperating with each other, and opposing-cooperating.Given all of that, this paper suggested that the government should get a better understanding of opinion leaders; rally and cultivate opinion leaders among public; make use of opinion leaders to avoid or defuse public crisis. On the other hand, governments should establish the scientific ruling concept, improve crisis response and communication system, broaden the channels for the communication with public opinion, open doors to multi-channel for supervision. Moreover, governments should reform and construct the credibility.