The Study On The Effectiveness Of The Mass Media In Public Policy-making

There is a long history for the relationship between media and politics. This book studies the interaction between media and politics from the perspective of public policies because, on one hand, the role of public policies as "governance instruments" has been increasingly outstanding in the political life of a country, on the other hand, "governing with the news" has entered the mainstream discourse in the "mediated society". In the contemporary society of highly advanced information technology, mass media can not only transmit public policy information, but also exert significant and sometimes even decisive influence on the operation of the public policy system with their specific function of "constructing reality". This book studies the role of mass media in the government’s improvement of its decision-making mechanism, enhancing decision-making level, promoting democratic and scientific decision making and strengthening policy efficacy from "two dimensions", policy studies and mass communication, and proposes conceptions and approaches for constructing good relationship among the government, the media and the public.The large amount of public problems in the contemporary society and the limitation of the public resources in the control of the government and its policy capacity demand that mass media assume important political and administrative functions, and particularly play a constructive role in the course of policy formulation. With social transformation, interest differentiation and the return and strengthening of public interest appeal, important and profound changes have taken place in the policy environment and media ecological environment, and the media have become an important social mechanism for promoting the improvement of the policy system and policy quality and maintaining the appropriateness and effectiveness of interest allocation. It is not only necessary but also possible to give full play to the political function of the media in interest expression channels and interest balance mechanism, accurately transmitting voices of different social strata, coordinating interests of each party in time and promoting the democratization and scientification of policy formulation.This book mainly adopts the normative approach and systematic analysis method and employs the agenda-setting theory, the media framework theory, the "Spiral of Silence" theory, the knowledge gap theory, the theory of deliberative democracy and the public sphere theory to explore the role of mass media in policy activities. The main specific method is case analysis method. Many representative cases are mentioned; but due to the limitation of the scope of the book, only three cases are selected in the detailed argumentation, that is, the "Xinhua News Agency between 1953 and 1957", the "Yuanmingyuan Park Seepage Prevention Project" and the "Xiamen PX Incident", in the hope that they can prove the corresponding views and deepen them to some extent.The book consists of an introduction, five chapters and a conclusion, which amount to about 160 thousand words.The introductory part focuses on introducing the genesis of the study, the current situation of the study, its theoretical value and practical significance, major theories and research methods as well as other issues that have to be explained.Chapter I, Mass Media and Public Policies from the Public Perspective. This chapter mainly introduces the research perspective of the book, holding that public policies and mass media share the essential attribute of publicness, which decides their relationship of mutual influence and constraint. Publicness is the logical starting point and ultimate destination of the study of media efficacy in the formulation of policies, which is reflected as follows:the normalization of news policy on mass media, that is, the determination and play of the functions of news policies as an important part of the public policy system and news management system play a critical role in the "media society"; the influence of mass media on public policies, that is, as an important bridge and medium connecting the government and the society, the media can extend public participation in the formulation of public policies, improve the democracy of public policies, realize the procedural justice of public policies and safeguard the citizens’right to speak.Chapter II, The Efficacy of Media in Social Transformation. This chapter mainly discusses the temporal and spatial background of the efficacy of the media. The role of the media in the course of policy making and scale of influence, to a very large extent, are decided by the awareness of the attributes and functions of the media by the Party and the government, especially the Party, and by the series of news policies, laws and regulations formulated by the Party and the government, especially the Party. This chapter consists of four sections. Section I studies the evolution of policy discourses in the transformation of the media. The role of news media in the formulation of policies in China is reviewed in two major phases, divided by the launching of the reform and opening-up. The "Xinhua News Agency between 1953 and 1957" is taken as an example to prove that the media played an important role in transforming social problems into policy problems and putting them on policy agenda while the media became a "propaganda tool" of policies. Section II discusses the influence of social transformation on the media from two perspectives, the change of the relationship between the country and the society and changes of social structure. SectionⅢanalyzes the profound changes of the policy communication environment since the launching of the reform and opening-up from such perspectives as the governance characteristics of policies against the backdrop of economic globalization and political democratization, the return and strengthening of the subject consciousness of policy objects, and the complexity and toughness of policy problems. Section IV focuses on the changes of the media ecological environment.Chapter III, Mass Media and Policy Formulation. This chapter mainly explores the specific role of mass media in the formulation of public policies and provides theoretical support for mass communication. It points out that mass media play an indispensable role in all links of policy formulation, mainly reflected in the discovery of problems and expression of interests at the phase of agenda creation and the provision of wisdom and knowledge at the phase of policy planning. This chapter explores the mechanism of the functions of mass media from two perspectives, the determination and "non-determination" of policy problems, on the basis of discussing policy agenda and the way to establish them as well as their role as "platform" for deliberative and democratic discussions. Finally, with the "Yuanmingyuan Park Seepage Prevention Project" as an example, the approach, style and force of media intervention in the formulation of public policies are analyzed.Chapter IV, Policy Formulation in the New Media Environment. This chapter first discusses the opportunities and challenges produced by the new media environment for the formulation of public policies, holding that compared with traditional media, new media have such characteristics as instantaneity, openness, individuality, focus, large amount of information, low-cost global transmission, convenience in inquiry and syncretization. Its essential characteristics are technical digitalization, interaction in transmission, large amount of contents and convenience in inquiry. The development of modern information network technology has changed the ecological landscape of the media as well as the public sphere, which is an important influence factor for policy formulation. The critical difference between network media and traditional media lies in the "expansion of information sources". Here, information sources are "participating entities" and expansion means the "extent of participation". Due to its unequalled attribute of transmission, the Internet exerts a more extensive and profound influence on the contemporary society whether in terms of the depth or the width of policy participation. The decision-making mode of traditional public policies has thus been changed. As a result, government decision making has assumed the trend of change from decision making by relying on experience to democratic and scientific decision making, from elite decision making to public and civilian participation in decision making. Secondly, in order to better study the changes of and influence factors on the path of policy formulation and elaborate the responsibilities of media in the course of "formulation" and "non formulation" in the policy field, a comparative study of the Xiamen "PX Incident" and the Chengdu "PX Incident" is carried out in Section III of this chapter. The new phenomenon that public intellectuals air their "voices" via the media "platform", construct public agenda and influence political life is particularly noted.Chapter V, Constructing Good Interaction among the Government, the Media and the Public. This chapter mainly explores the reasons for the gap between what it ought to be and what is in the role of mass media in the formulation of public policies, and proposes conceptions and major approaches for constructing a new mode of relationship among the government, the media and the public. Due to the double constraint of the government and the market, in addition to the lack of media literacy and consciousness of participating in public decision making among a large amount of people, the role of the media in the field of policy formulation is limited. This chapter starts from the limit of interest expression in the media to analyze the reasons for the lack of media publicness. More importantly, it holds that the construction of good interaction between mass media and policy agenda has unusual practical significance. We should start from three entities, mass media, the government and the public within the socialist legal framework, take multiple measures together and promote overall development:mass media should improve their public credibility and strengthen their function of setting up topics for discussion; the government should innovate its method of regulation, create a lenient environment for the media to develop; the public should improve their education and strengthen their influence on social life. This most urgent matter at present is to launch the News Law as soon as possible to regulate the rights and obligations of the three parties.The conclusion mainly looks forward to the practice in reconstructing the relationship among public members:public news. This book holds that public news renovates and undermines traditional concepts and re-positions the relationship among the media, the government and the public. "Mass" stresses the state of nonconsciousness of the audience, "audience" stresses the passive state of the receiving party, and "public" stresses the dialogue state between the communicator and the recipient. From mass to audience to public, we can see the return to "people orientation", which can better represent the public as a social entity. The arrival of the age of public news in China is based on reality but is also confronted with serious challenges. In a sense, public news enriches the implications of the public sphere and is more conducive to the construction of a harmonious public space. The public news movement has brought people more hopes and expectations, and the construction of "public news" in China should have its own distinctive characteristics. We are drawing closer to the ideal public sphere.