The Research Of Crisis Public Relations Strategy Based On Dual Discourse Space Theory

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," said Charles Dickens during the nineteenth century, and now during our own time we can still echo his words.The rapid development of Internet information technology has led to major changes in modern society. One of the major changes involves information transmission. The emergence of the Internet has broken the one-way transmission of traditional media; more importantly, it has given any individual the potential to become a self-media. Because the ways of communicating information are becoming more and more diversified, it is much more difficult to control social crises; therefore, it is more important than ever to choose a proper crisis public relations strategy to suit the character of our modern society.Because the Internet is built on two-way interaction, when the government is dealing with a crisis, the dual discourse space occurs:the government discourse and the citizen’s discourse. The conflict between the two spaces has become one of the most important influences upon the crisis development process. It is very urgent for PR professionals to come up with new crisis PR strategies based on the dual discourse space theory.Based on the above, this essay focuses on the "Beijing7.21storm incident," which occurred in July2012as a very typical public crisis public relations incident. This essay utilizes the methods of content analysis and interviewing to analyze this case. The result shows that the outcomes of the interaction between the government and its citizens are in complete conformity with the dual discourse space theory.Based on this analysis, combined with "Internet democracy" theory, as well as a variety of modern crisis public relations strategies, this essay comes up with a new public crisis public relations strategy, which is to use different crisis public relations tactics in four different spaces:use authority strategy in non-Internet official space, use dialogue strategy in Internet office space, use interpersonal strategy in non-Internet non-official space, use agenda setting strategy in Internet non-official space.