Crisis Communication, The Environment Of Web 2.0 Technology

This dissertation is an effort to analyse basic characteristics of crisis dissemination and work out strategical solutions for crisis management practice. The author takes an open, interdisciplinary approach to the topic, setting crisis dissemination process in an environment of Web2.0, focusing on the four aspects of crisis dissemination, that is, the content of crisis information, the speed of dissemination, the process of communication, and the management strategies taken. In other words, this dissertation discusses the basic characteristics of crises dissemination and strategies which may help setteling the problems in crises management.Web 2.0 boasts with such features as idea-orientedness, user-experience-orientedness and humanity-orientedness, combined with interactivity, instantaneousness, diversified service, and global dissemination.As to the dissemination of crisis information, it has been developing several new features ever since the birth of the Web2.0 techonology. In terms of the dissemination of information, on the one hand, senders of the crisis information (information origins) present a feature of dispersivity by means of both geography and social structure. On the other hand, while the senders are scattered around, the contents, topics and media of crises information are being aggregated at the same time. The contradiction of dispersivity and aggregation stays harmoniously in Web2.0 and turns out to be a unique characteristic of crisis dissemination.In addition, this dissertation trys to analyze the causes of the features of crisis dissemination from the aspect of information production in the situation of Web2.0. Due to the highlight of user-oriented idea, an exploration to the users is absolutely necessary. The dissertation analyzes the information production in web2.0 from the psychological level, focusing on user's motivation. The author finds out that the understanding and dissemination of information is affected by the personality and environment. With the development of the virtual communities in Web2.0, crises management has been confronted with more and more challenges.The features of specific information dissemination of Web2.0 caused by the specific way of producing information brings several challenges. Among them the most vital one is the change of the period of crisis dissemination. The period of crisis outbreak becomes drastically shorter while the continuity of influence becomes much longer and thus crisis management faces more difficulties.To sum up, this dissertation sets the production and dissemination of crisis information in the specific web2.0 situation, and induces the basic features of crisis dissemination in the age of Web 2.0.Since Web2.0 is designed human-oriented, the management of crisis information should be considered from the aspect of the user. From the pointview of information cybernetics, gatekeeper is a typical approach looking at the topic. So, the author also makes an effort to build a mode of crisis dissemination process in a technique situation of Web2.0 and work out a five-grade gatekeeper model with several strategic suggestions that is expected to solve the critical problems of crisis management.