A Study On The Mechanism Of Mass Media's Participation In Public Policy Process

The mass media's participation in the public policy process is an important manifestation of exerting its social function, a manifestation of an important guarantee for the public policy to realize its nature of authoritative distribution over public interest, so as to safeguard its scientific operation and, of an important approach for the public to realize their right to the participation in public policy process.Taking the process of banning"mamu"(tricycle) in Wuhan as a case study, this paper probes into the public policy process from the perspective of Journalism and Communication; and under the framework of political systematic analysis theories, this paper explores the mechanism of the mass media's participation in the public policy process from three stages, ---the policy input phase, policy transformation phase and policy output phase. This paper holds that mass media should take part in every stage of public policy process and play its unique function. These functions can be demonstrated in many forms, like focusing on social problems, building opinion platform to promote policy agenda, publicizing decision-making process, opening up decision-making"black boxes"to monitor its running, informing policy contents and acting as"opinion leaders"to monitor the operation of policies and the following feedbacks Based on the foregoing, this paper presents a model of the mass media's participation in the public policy process. This paper consists of six chapters.Chapterâ… is an introductory part, includes the research motivation, theoretical basis and methodology, mentality and structure of the paper, etc.Chapterâ…¡theoretically explores the necessity of mass media's participation in the public policy process from three aspects, namely, the process of mass media's participation in public policy process to realize its functions, right of the public to public policy process, and the nature of public policies.Chapterâ…¢introduces the process of banning"mamu"in Wuhan. This case is the study target.Starting from chapterâ…£, this paper explores the mechanism of mass media's participation in the public policy process from three stages---the policy input phase, the policy transformation phase and the policy output phase under the framework of political systematic analysis theories, combining with the process of banning"Manu"in Wuhan. This chapter discusses the mechanism of mass media's participation in the public policy input on the basis of the two types of public policy inputs, the inside one and the outside one. In the former stage, the government achieves public support and public wisdom by promulgating policy motion; in the latter stage, mass media accelerate the formation of the policy-trigger mechanism.Chapterâ…¤discusses the mechanism of the mass media's participation in the transformation of public policy and addresses that mass media aims at opening up the decision-making"black boxes"and publicizing decision-making process to place all decision conducts under the supervision of the public. On this stage, the mechanism for the mass media to play its role is manifested mainly by promulgating policy targets in time, collecting and conveying public opinion and suggestions, proclaiming optional policies, reporting decision hearings from the beginning to the end and, reporting publicly the process and consequences of the previous decision-making conducts.Chapterâ…¥explores the mechanism of the mass media's participation in the public policy output and proposes that the mode of public policy communication in China should be one transited from organization communication to mass communication, and that policy coverage doesn't mean policy advocacy. On this stage, the mechanism of mass media to play its role is mainly presented by acting as"opinion leaders"directly, collecting public opinion, participating in policy assessment and offering feedbacks to policy conduct.Finally, this paper accordingly designs the model of mass media's participation in the public policy process, and presents the imbalance and space for its development in China.