A Study On Demassified Agenda Setting Of Disaster News Coverage Within72Hours After Earthquakes

Within72hours after earthquakes, partial changes are taking places in the situationof media: some of the previous strong media cannot function well due to the limitationof its reach, while other relatively weak media receive more attention. Moreover, thedevelopment of new media causes subtle changes in the status quo of media as a whole.Under such a circumstance, the great amount and complexity of information brings thebenefit of its quick dissemination and publicity, but also blocks its channel and affectsits effectiveness because of its drastic increase within a short period of time.Furthermore, the audiences affected by earthquakes should be categorized ratherthan generalized, because audiences from disaster areas and non-disaster areas, as wellas from hard-hit areas and lightly-hit areas, have different needs for information. At thesame time, because of the influence of earthquakes, the way in which the media reachaudiences varies from case to case. Thus it is of great necessity to conduct accuratecommunication according to audiences’ needs and media channels. However, nowadaysthere is little study on “demassified communication” in the news coverage ofdisasters.Therefore, this dissertation start with four key words, i.e. News Coverage ofDisaster, Golden72Hours, Demassified Communication and Agenda Setting, tocategorize the audiences from perspectives of communication contents and channelsinto three classes within72hours after the earthquake, and then analyze theircharacteristics and media reach separately. A case study is carried on the420Ya’anEarthquake to show the status quo of China’s demassified news coverage of disasters,and relevant measures and strategies are drawn based on the outstanding examplestherein.This dissertation discovers that nowadays China’s media, to a certain degree, havea subconsciousness of demassification in disaster news reporting, which is derived fromtheir accumulation of experience. But as to the demassification in specific agendasetting cases, there is still a space for improvement. In order to realize an effectivedemassified communication, media must uphold the principles of pinpointing theiraudiences clearly, making the target audiences as close to the actual audiences aspossible, heightening the themes, etc.