Research On Ruling Party Public Image Communication

The rapid transformation of the Chinese economy and society coexists with advancing globalization. Meanwhile, new communication technologies keep popping up, giving birth to new media landscape and new environment for public opinion. Under this circumstance, the problems China facing are full of complexity and uncertainty. This poses great challenges for governing the nation and also for image communication of CPC. The ruling parties in the world are all facing similar challenges since the transformation of communication and discourse is alike.After World War II, the public image of ruling party plays a more and more positive role in its ruling practice. Also, political legitimacy has become a important perspective of political party research. Different views on empirical legitimacy (focusing on public identity of ruling) and normative legitimacy (focusing on criteria of value) have fallen into different schools of thoughts.What kind of request do these legitimate provisions make for the ruling practice and public image communication?This paper has absorbed the social crisis theory from Almond and Samuel P.Huntington, especially Jurgen Habermas’ research on legitimacy crisis, combining ruling party’s expedition of different countries, and raises the core issue----how is the ruling party (CPC) suffering from the systemic crisis of its image communication; How could the ruling party defend the ruling legitimacy in the process of crisis response and public image rehabilitation.Staring from the core position, this paper analyzed the ruling party (CPC) which is suffering from the crisis of its public image communication----tools crisis, adjustment crisis, identity crisis and value crisis. The tools crisis is weakening, degeneration and marginalization of communication tool system. In that case, it disregards the order of decision making system, what’s more, it is out of control and unable to bear the mission. Identity crisis is a refusal and avoidance to the ruling party image communication of internal and international audiences. If the decision making system is not able to provide reasonable decision, it will cause adjustment crisis and it can only reach micro effect, even causes negative effect. In the event of systemic crisis, the image communication system of ruling party will not be able to produce "value" resources or motivate public to participate, hence, the image will collapse.In a word, the ruling party should adapt itself to the changing circumstances, adjust to the crisis and solve it. Aiming at tools crisis, it has to rebuild party-owned media influence, enhance the effectiveness of communication; develop and take advantage of new media in order to balance voice of public and effective public opinion guiding. Focusing on adjustment crisis, the ruling party has to upgrade communication quality and be equipped with technology and technique of modern communication, improve the ability of communication. To the identity crisis, the ruling party should optimize its ruling practice and communication intervention, so as to positively interact with the public. As for value crisis, it should make an overall plan of its image culture construction in order to obtain deep-rooted identity from public.Through literature review, theoretical analysis, quantitative comparison, qualitative analysis, empirical investigation, historical reflection and comparison between the eastern and western world, and deepening study, this paper has clarified some specious or apparent problems. On the micro level, the image communication crisis of ruling party is caused by technical mistakes. For instance, some public affairs are handled clumsily and the ruling party public image should endorse it. On the middle level, such crisis involves conversions of communication concepts and thoughts, such as respecting the laws of journalism and communication or not, selecting closed governance thinking or opening governance to guide communication, which will lead to different results. On the macro level, the ruling party should improve the system of building and managing the party including the effectiveness of core issues interpretation system.Public image communication of the ruling party is an issue which has both practical and theoretical value, and in multidisciplinary field. The meaning of this research is reflected in the practical and theoretical level. Through analyzing and researching on micro level, middle level and macro level, this research proposes some systematic suggestions for improving public image communication of ruling party, which may have some practical reference value.At the theoretical level, this paper has studied the public image communication of ruling party on framework, relative theories, research methods and major problems. However, owing to the limitation of knowledge and time, this paper still has some weaknesses. I hope this article has broached the subject. For example, because of the objective conditions limitation, although this paper has studied ruling parties from different countries, the major research subject is till the CPC. If it can study on ruling party image communication from other countries in addition to the CPC, the academic research in this field will be more systematic. Besides, the public image of the CPC cannot be constructed and communicated without interpreting some ideology key issues, such as constitutional democracy, universal values, civil society, press freedom and so on. Although this paper has mentioned these problems, it is not sufficient. The space of this field is very large. Owing to this, researchers need to have more knowledge, wisdoms and accumulations. I expect to read much better achievements.