Research On Media’s Social Responsibilities In The Public Crisis Communication

There are kinds of crisis in all countries, this is to say, China can’t be exception. Nowadays, our country is in the key period of social and economic transition. In Chinese history there is a significant tradition that prepare for war in time of peace and governor never ignore the chaos. As far as China in the period of transition is concerned, whether it can correctly and promptly handle public crisis directly affect the stability of our country’s political and economic development. Our country is right in frequent time of public crisis. Since the crisis of SARS virus in2003, whether in natural and economic field or social field, public crisis have been happening one by one. Such as, Sichuan Wenchuan earthquake, Yushu earthquake, H1N1flu virus, Sanlu milk powder issue, all kinds of coal mine disasters,"7.23" Yongwen line railway traffic accident……etc. The characteristic of public crisis in China is frequency and large-scale, which determine that the media have to play a positive role with great responsibility in social public crisis communication.The media has the nature of mouthpiece, the characteristic of social radar and the identity of information disseminator, which fully demonstrate in public crisis communication. Any media has an unshrinkable social responsibility and obligation in the period of public crisis concealing, erupting, and fading. If the media is lack of the sense of social responsibility and in highly-political sensitiveness period government fail to guide public opinion, it would make crisis expanding, which have bad effect on social stability and even affect the life and death of the state power.This article, beginning with social public crisis our country is faced with, research, analyze and even conclude the function our media should play and the social responsibility our media should bear in public crisis communication, by means of elaborating the theory of public crisis communication, displaying new features of public crisis and the role our media plays in public crisis communication as well as the current situation and cause of social media responsibility, putting forward new idea of constructing the system of our media’s social responsibility in the new era.On the basis of understanding the situation, on the one hand, this paper reflect the missing of the media’s social responsibility in the typical public crisis happened in our country in recent years; on the other hand, this paper, to be reference, analyzed how three state of Western Europe carry their own media social responsibility while dealing with public crisis. Therefore, correctly localizing our media’s social responsibility is significant and far-reaching for dealing with appropriately the public crisis.