The Dissemination Function Of News Media In Crisis Affairs

In 1990's, natural disasters, such as flood, drought , earthquake, hurricane occurred from time to time; man-made affairs , like aviation crash, mine collapse, food poisoning, happened in succession ; affairs like virus infection, war, hostage kidnapping , terrorism attack, are more common. The frequency of such affairs attracts attention of more and more countries and societies. The Attack of Sep,11 ,the Iraq War, SARS, the West Nile Virus, Tsunami of Indian Ocean, all these affairs quickly spread throughout the world about the whole process of their occurrence, growth, alleviation and retreat. Meanwhile, the whole world are very worried about the ways of governments' handling these affairs and common persons' reaction .The spread of all these affairs benefits from unblocked information channels and news reports. In crisis affairs, media play a positive role and this can not only help to set up their authorities and public belief and defend the stability and order of the society. The past study on crises affairs mainly master minded schemes for governments to complete the spread of crises from a grand angle. My thesis shifts the angle and deeply analyses the spreading function of media in crises affairs by using the theories of journalism, mass communication, ethics, public relations. On one hand, I point out the restriction and the use of crises affairs to media; on the other hand, I put forward strategies of dealing with crises for media.The paper has four chapters. The first chapter sets forth the reason of choosing the topic, and emphatically analyses the present documents about crises affairs in our national academic circles, explains the studying frame of this topic. The second chapter analyses the cause and characteristic of crises affairs, and gives definition to the crises spread in information society, demonstrates the study category, emphasizes the principle of media's spread in crises affairs. The third chapter's two sections respectively analyses the passive function of crises affairs from two aspects. First, I point out that the restriction comes from three parts: the unrestricting factors in crises affairs, negative effect of crises affairs on news spreading environment and personal quality of news reporters; show clearly the main ways and methods of using media, by using Iraq War in 2003 and the hostage kidnapping in Russia in 2004 as examples. The forth chapter has four sections and I divide the spreading strategy of crises affairs into four stages as the latent period, the beginning period, the sustaining period and the retreating period. By emphatically demonstrating the strategy in different periods, I point out that facing crises affairs, media should give subjective initiative into full play, meet the needs of the public for information to the most degree, serve the society to maintain stability and order.