The Agenda Building Of Genetic Modification Event In Risk Communication

With the industrial revolution, our world step into the modern society. To avoid the crisis brought by nature, people improve their surrounding with science and technology. However, not only bring us civilization, science and technology also cause so many uncertainty and social risks. Like the nuclear technology, the deterioration of ecological environment, global warming, instability and coup of countries and certain regions, financial and economic crisis, food safety issues, and even the Media information dissemination itself can be the risk sources of the modern society.In the context of risk society, we use communication theories and sociology theories as basic theory. According to the agenda-setting hypothesis and the related concepts of risk communication, it is necessary to use literature analysis, content analysis and case interview, to find out the risk communication problems of controversial genetically modified technology and food, thus we can better understand the agenda building and the interrelationship among the three public opinion:official opinion, media opinion and audience opinion. Combined with the related concepts of risk communication, we also explain the causes of communication disequilibrium during the GM risk communication. Finally, we propose the related strategies and recommendations for the problem of GM risk communication.In this study, we use the Hunan Golden Rice Event in2012as a typical case of risk communication of GM, and also analysis the contents of media coverage and public comment during the certain time of this case, in order to understand the status of GM risk communication. We select Sina as a news carrier to obtain media reports, totally get146news about Hunan Golden Rice Event in the certain time period; on the other hand, we choose the BBS of People’s Daily Online as the contents of public comment, totally get241Main posts by the BBS users in the certain time period. After summarizing the contents of two parts, we focus on the agenda building and their correlation with the following assumptions:1. The official opinion field has agenda-setting effects on media opinion field. However media opinion field cannot effect the official opinion field.2. The media opinion field and audience opinion field have agenda-setting effects between each other, and media opinion field has stronger effects on audience opinion field;3. The official opinion field indirectly affect audience opinion field by way of setting the event agenda for media opinion field.We use SPSS.19statistics software to process the data. According to the statistical results, it is found that there is an interactive relationship between official opinion field and media opinion field, and the official opinion field have more prominent impact on media opinion field in this interaction; However official opinion field and media opinion field barely have any impact on audience opinion field, the audience opinion field is almost in a relatively independent public opinion environment, thus communication disequilibrium appears.Then the study explains the causes of communication disequilibrium in two aspects. Firstly, the unforeseen cognition of audience about GM risk, the invisibility cognition of audience, the impact of public opinion assimilation on audience as well as the restrictions of audience knowledge literacy, are all likely to hinder them from understanding the GM risk.Secondly, too much emphasis on dramatic or exceptional circumstances by media reports, the lack of GM knowledge structure of media reporters, over-coverage of the issues in dispute, and reliance on a single source of information, all may result Communication Paradox of media during the risk communication. In addition, GM events highlight multiple risks by themselves, including risks of GM security, risks of academic ethics, regulatory risks and other risks caused by politics, business and market factors, are also the important reasons of communication disequilibrium.Regarding the strategies of avoiding communication disequilibrium of GM risk, the article uses Democratic Paradigm of risk communication as the leading, and mentions the importance of public participation in scientific decision-making. We also see the interaction between audience and scientific experts, audience and media as a starting point, providing two specific strategies:Consensus Conference and Public Journalism, so that we can avoid the communication disequilibrium of GM risk. Official organizations should permit and actively encourage public participation in scientific decision-making, and establish the two-way communication between audience and scientific experts; at the same time, media are not only to face the present audience, but also need to learn how to build the future audience with the efforts of achieving public properties.