Research On Government Officials’ Media Literacy And Communication Competency From Micro-blog Angle

With information technology development, micro-blog, as a representative of newmedia technology, changes the traditional way of information communication, andbrings great influences on people’s life and the whole society. Government officials inwestern developed countries firstly applied micro-blog into political communication andgovernance, and received good effects. Since micro-blog emerged in China, Chinesegovernment officials also brought micro-blog into their work, making a trend foradministrative micro-blogging fashionable within a short time. Yet this phenomenonreflects Chinese government officials’ improved media literacy and communicationcompetence, or only shows the fact that they are merely blindly following the trend?Based on the definition and meaning of ‘media literacy’, the thesis does theresearch on Chinese government officials’ media literacy on micro-blog from threeperspectives: the way they get information from, their recognition and evaluation of theinformation from particular media, and their use of the media to produce andcommunicate information. Besides, the thesis also selects some representative Chinesegovernment officials and organizations that firstly eat the crab of administrative micro-blogging and have influences and set good examples for the followers as the researchsubjects, and dose the content analysis of their micro-blogs, the evaluation about theircommunication effects, and the case study of their micro-blogs’ features and flaws.Through research, the thesis finds that currently Chinese government officials’ medialiteracy is not good enough, and there is a big media literacy gap between officials whoare from different areas, in charge of different responsibilities, in different ages, andwith different official levels. As a whole, the application rate for administrative micro-blogging is not high. For those representative Chinese government officials andorganizations, although their media literacy is relatively better, they still do not wellenough in some aspects, such as they sometimes neglect their official identity whenblogging, they use micro-blog as a private way when it should be used publicly, theyblog casually without confusingly, they lack mutual communication with their audience,and they don’t take full advantage of micro-blog’s function as an ‘omni-media’. Relyingon the fact that micro-blog plays more and more important roles in a nation’s politics,the thesis takes good examples of governance with micro-blog in western countries’ asreferences after comparative study about micro-blog’s political applications in bothChina and western developed countries, and brings some suggestions for Chinesegovernment officials to improve their media literacy on micro-blog and communicationcompetency. It also draws a blueprint of governing with micro-blog as a future trend forpolitics.