Research On Dissemination Of Food Safety Crisis Information In Social Media

In the past years food safety incidents frequently occurred in China. The food safety events of producing and selling sham and poisonous food were frequently exposed to public such as the "OSI Meat Incident", "Swill-cooked Dirty Oil Incident" and "Lean Meat Incident". Such events have caused severe influence on the social public, constantly striking the consumers’confident in food safety in China. It is indicated in the report on consumers’ confidence in food safety continuously published by Sina News Center from 2011 to 2014 that more than 90% of the interviewees considered food safety in China problematic and that more than 85% were "concerned". The issue of food safety has become a focus of concern for the public. After the food safety incident occurred, the causes, development situation, response of the organization concerned and the attitude of the government become the issues most concerned by the consumers; while in social media, the information is spread and evolved along the user relations through publication, forwarding and comment, in the form of fission dissemination. Presently social medial have become an important source of news, improving the enthusiasm and possibility of public participation in the incident of food safety crisis. To enrich the theoretical results of social media information dissemination and to better address the food safety issue, an exploratory study is conducted in this dissertation on the spreading of food safety crisis information in social media.Firstly, relevant literature is sorted out and relevant conceptual and theoretical foundation is introduced for the spreading of food safety crisis information in social media. In addition, the domestic and foreign research results are reviewed from the perspectives of food safety, public governance and the spreading of crisis information in social media. In the review it is found that the research conducted by domestic and foreign scholars is focused on the response of government and enterprises to crisis, the characteristics of each stage of crisis dissemination and the role of media in crisis dissemination, and the research on the spreading of food safety crisis information in social media is limited. The researches on solving food safety problems with public governance theories are generally centered on the weaknesses of food safety regulation, the inevitability of introduction public governance and the three-party cooperative mode and mechanism of food safety administration among consumers, food enterprises and government, with very limited results of empirical research, especially the research on public participation in food safety administration through social media. Based on that, the main content of this dissertation covers the rule and mechanism for spreading of food safety crisis information in social media, spreading speed, the influence of spreading on each subject and the building of a food safety crisis management system.Then an analysis is made on the content and characteristics of information dissemination in social media, and it is found that the social media represented by microblog and micro-massage have overturned the traditional mode of information dissemination, playing a critical role in information dissemination and focused social event fermentation.Following that an empirical analysis is made. The actual data about spreading of the information about nine typical food safety crisis events including the "Swill-cooked Dirty Oil Incident" in Sino Microblog are selected to establish the spreading network of food safety crisis information. The internal rule and evolvement rule of food safety crisis information spreading are discussed, the spreading mode of food safety crisis information in social media is simulated, the spreading of food safety crisis information is divided into different stages in association with the characteristics of information dissemination in social media and the features of each stage is summarized.In the dissertation, the mode of crisis information spreading in social media is reconstructed in association with the characteristics of crisis information spreading in social media, the information dissemination after occurrence of a crisis is divided into different stages and the characteristics of each stage are discussed.Then based on the actual data on the microblog platforms of Sina, Tencent, Sohu and Netease, modeling is conducted for the spreading speed of information of typical food safety crises, models are established for short-term and long-term information spreading speed, and the feasibility of different prediction models and the precision of predicted results are compared.Based on the conclusions from the foresaid research, the dissertation proposes the impact of spreading of food safety crisis information in social media on consumers, government regulatory departments, food manufacturers and distributors. Through empirical study, the role of the public in the spreading of food safety crisis information in social media is verified and the public is taken into the process of solving the problem of food safety, which enriches the research results of public governance theory. Finally the countermeasures are proposed for better addressing the issues concerning food safety from such perspectives as how to improve the public consciousness of food safety, bringing the role of supervision into better play, bringing the role of media certified users into full play, promoting the government to perform its regulatory duty, credit establishment directed by food industrial organizations and improvement of the food manufacturers’social responsibility to provide basis for the monitoring and prewarning of public opinions about food safety on social media platforms as well as the construction of food safety crisis management system.The main creative ideas in the dissertation are as follows:(1) Revealing the rules and network structure characteristics for the spreading of food safety crisis information in social media and re-dividing the states of crisis information spreadingIn the dissertation the actual data about spreading of the information about nine typical food safety crisis events including the "OSI Meat Incident" in Sino Microblog are selected to establish the spreading network of food safety crisis information. The internal rule and evolvement rule of food safety crisis information spreading are discussed, the information dissemination after occurrence of a crisis is divided into different stages in association with the characteristics of crisis information spreading in social media, and the characteristics of each stage are discussed.(2) Verifying the role of public participation in food safety administration through case-based examination, enriching the research results of theories on public administrationWith the public administration developed to the internet era, the spreading advantages and influence of new media such as social media may enlarge the channels of public participation and attract the public to further participate in public affairs, while food safety has become the focus of concern of the public in recent years. Therefore, it will definitely bring pressure for food manufacturers, distributors and regulatory authorities by directing the public to make use of social media to take an active part in the exposure of food safety issues and disclosure of hidden problems in food safety, which is of extremely important significance for food safety administration. The results of analysis on the spreading of information about the typical food safety incidents selected show that in recent years, most food safety incidents are exposed by the consumers. After the information about food safety crisis is publicized on social media, it disseminates explosively in a short time and the process of dissemination is advanced by a large number of common users. The research results verify the role of the public in the spreading of food safety crisis information in social media, and the public is taken into the process of solving the food safety problems to enrich the results of researches on public administration theories.(3) A quantitative study is conducted on the spreading process of food safety crisis information in social mediaBased on the actual data on the microblog platforms, modeling is conducted for the spreading speed of information of nine typical food safety crisis incidents, with models established for short-term and long-term information spreading speed. It is indicated in the result that in the short term, after the food safety crisis is exposed on microblog, the times of forwarding and number of comments by users are highly correlated and the spreading speed within 24 hours after the occurrence follows Gauss Function. Prediction is made for the long-term trend through ARIMA Model and BP neural network method, and the accuracy and applicability of the model is verified by comparing actual data with the data predicted by the two methods. Is found that from the perspective of long-term prediction effect, the prediction value of BP neural network is more accurate than ARMA, but in the short term the prediction result of ARMA is more reliable than the prediction with BP neural network.