| On July21,2012, Beijing experienced a rainstorm during the night, in the samenight, People’s Daily opened its micro-blog. It took only four months that thenumbers of its fans on micro-blog surpassed circulation of people’s Daily. And itsinfluence is increasing day by day.Up till now, central media such as Xinhua Agency, People’s Daily, CCTV, andChina National Radio, have opened their Micro-blogs one after another. Theyfrequently gave opinions on some important news and events, have a special influenceon the society as national team of micro-blog. This gave a very good response to thecentral committee’s instructions and spirits: central media should actively enter intothe field of micro-blog, run well legal person micro-blog, and encourage editors andjournalists open personal micro-blogs, make the voice of mainstream louder andstronger.Many years ago, Nan Zhenzhong, the former chief editor of Xinhua NewsAgency, had already mentioned that currently there were two fields of public opinion.One field includes party newspaper, national television, and national newsagency and so on. They form the public opinion field of mainstream. The other isbased on the opinions from mouth to mouth, especially “nongovernmental publicopinion field”. People can discuss the current events on the internet, point out themistakes and give advises, and comment on the public management of thegovernment.In2008, when the public sentiment monitoring section of the People.com was being built, the idea of connecting the “two public opinions fields” of official media andfolk media was already proposed by the website. The connecting of the two fields, however, cannot be limited in the connecting of in-system or out-system media fields, but rather should be reflected in the connecting of new and old media fields.Gestures from major central media like People’s Daily of opening online micro-blog accounts reflect the reforming trend of central media in this new media era, which can be summarized as attaching greater importance to new media like the micro-blog;spreading the policies and guidelines of the Party and the government and socialist mainstream values by responding to public opinions actively and taking the initiatives insetting up problem-solving agendas; and integrating the “folk opinions field”, forginga strong force of positive public voice online and thereafter taking back the public opinion highland in the world of Internet media.This article introduces some basic information of a couple of major central mediain China on program setting, communication strategy and level of influence, andexamines how these media performs in some significant news and events. Based onsuch information, we discuss the way in which the central media and micro-blogconnect the “two public opinion fields”.As a result of the deepening of social transformation and the spread of newmedia represented by micro-blog, a new picture of public opinion has taken shape inChina, a picture that official opinion field and folk opinion field check and balance aswell as help each other forward. While micro-blog is the key platform of forming“folk opinion field”, the central media is the mouthpiece of “official opinion field”.The central media’s entering into micro-blog reflects some trend in social reform;therefore, it is quite necessary to conduct a study on this regard. Besides, we can alsolearn how to integrate the “two public opinion fields” and form the collective force ofboth by drawing on useful lessons from a observation of how the central mediainnovate on communication concept to connect the “two public opinion fields”. |
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