Government Management Of Internet Public Opinion Crisis

With the progress of China’s reforms, various contradictions become the focus; theinternational financial crisis has rendered the economic and political situations morecomplicated, while the Internet has also brought huge changes to people’s life. Especiallyprovided the high-speed communication network, ordinary people in the virtual networkenjoy the freedom of speech which was unimaginable in the era of traditional media, varioussocial contradictions and social problems has found their way to let off, come together oreven burst out on the network which has play an increasingly prominent role in gathering thesocial public opinion. The gathering of such negative public opinion would impose badimpact on the society and bring great challenge to government management.The study on the management of internet public opinion was just started in China, so theresearch is still in a preliminary stage. The Chinese governments at local levels have not yet hadenough awareness toward network public opinion crisis, there is not applicable or compatible publicopinion management mechanism and system to deal with the frequent occurrences of crisis and riskcaused by Internet public opinion in China, it is a pressing matter for Chinese government toestablish an adequate system to handle Internet public opinion crisis.This dissertation carries on the preliminary analysis and research on the management ofInternet public opinion crisis, based on the theories of public management, crisis management,public opinion and journalism, combined with case study of Wenzhou7.23Bullet Train Crash.First, started from the definition and connotation of the public opinion crisis, this paper usesdata to present the development status of the network and its impact on governmentmanagement. Specific cases are used to demonstrate the outbreak of network public opinioncrisis; a thorough case study of Wenzhou7.23Bullet Train Crash is conducted to analyze theevolution, characteristics and roots behind this internet public opinion crisis. Combining thepractice of our government management on Internet public opinion crisis, problems existed inmanagement are attributed to six aspects such as the lack of understanding and awareness, lackof communication channels, inappropriate responses to internet public opinion crisis, thepersonnel shortage, the lack of a unified intelligent network monitoring system and the absenceof a comprehensive response mechanism. On this basis, the author proposes somecountermeasures and suggestions in terms of ideological level, technical level, personnelpreparation, media outlets and the internet-public-opinion-supervision-disciplinary mechanism.