From Sars To H1n1: Crisis Communication Strategies In Transition Of The Chinese Government

When crisis come, the government faces not only the crisis itself, but also the public and the media in crisis. At the early stage of "SARS", government departments concerned concealed the epidemic and the media was "dumb" and seems absent from the issue. As a result, lack of effective and comprehensive information caused panic of the public and irreparable damage was done. On the contrary, in the "Influenza H1N1" flu crisis, the Government introduced an open and transparent program of prevention and control. By strengthening cooperation and interaction with the media, the public's right to know was guaranteed and there was no panic and chaos like 7 years ago.This paper is divided into five parts: the introduction part introduces the communication of our government in crisis and the current study of government's crisis communication. ChapterⅠmainly analyzes the background of Chinese government's crisis communication which includes 3 parts: crisis management system, media development and audience's sense of crisis; ChapterⅡexplains the development of government's strategy transform of crisis communication from 3 main aspects, i.e. the main ideas of media, forms of media and public crisis awareness. ChapterⅢdescribes the experiences and lessons learned from government crisis communication. Successful experiences and mistakes are summed up through the analysis of 6 years' typical cases. ChapterⅣproposes the trends and countermeasures for the government to deal with crisis communication. Theory and case analysis are combined to get the trend of crisis communication and strategies are proposed. The conclusion part summarized the main content and put forward some deeper thinking on government communication strategy under crisis.In the context of society transition, globalization and new media, it is a pressing task for the Chinese government to seek a scientific and effective strategy of crisis communication. In this paper, some suggestions and communication strategy are proposed after using the lessons of SARS as a starting point, the experience of H1N1 flu dissemination as the transit point, combined with 7 years' typical cases of crisis, doing comprehensive analysis of experiences the government got from crisis communication and predicting future trends of crisis communication transition. The solid triangle pattern of "government - the media - the public" is formed in this paper; they interact and strive to defuse crisis and promote social harmony.