An Analysis Of The Impact Of Media Crisis Communication On Public Perception Of Crisis

China has already entered the fifth period of high crisis occurrence frequency. In the critical time, the frequent occurrence of public crisis has become one of the biggest obstacles of social development. Crisis information has become an major topic of media. Today, media is playing an even more important part in crisis communication. And the emergence of Internet becomes a new approach for crisis communication. Media crisis communication is considered to be the most effective instrument to guide public and stabilize society because of its great influence on public perception. Study of media crisis communication with the point of view of public perception has great significance. It is helpful to promote media agenda and make crisis communication more effective. Then people can avoid communication error and take appropriate behavior in crisis, which means a lot to social stability.This paper first discusses the major impact on public perception from media crisis communication. Based on the data of 18 typical crisis events from 2003 to 2007, the influential factors are filtered by correlation analysis. Then using ridge regression to build multi-factor model of public perception about crisis. In the model, media crisis communication is proved to be the major impact factor. Second, it uses 9403 raw data of 51 crisis events between 2003 and 2007 to take empirical study on the situation of media agenda about crisis. It takes elaborate analyse about agenda setting of media in case of crisis, the content and quantity of crisis information and so on. This step is achieved by case analysis and comparative analysis. Third, on the basis of survey data from questionnaire, this paper analyzes the response of public perception under the influence of media crisis communication. It includes perception positivity, source preference, information requirement, perception deviation and orientation and so on. Finally this paper gives some suggestions on the promotion of media crisis communication which will helps the public to get correct crisis perception and treat it calmly. These efforts will enable government to maintain social stability and reduce the harm of public crisis.