Research On Relief Of The Grass-roots "Information Deprivation Mentality" From The Perspective Of Risk Society

In recent years, group incidents concerning environmental issues occurfrequently. The development of group incidents is a process of gambling from variousparts, among which information gambling plays an important role. As the groupdeprived in the redistribution of social interest, apart from their shortage of economicand political resources, the grass-roots’access to information and expression is alsolimited. In “Shifang Incident”, local government’s inability in informationcommunication as well as the absence of media further worsened people’s informationdisadvantage.This paper concentrates on “Shifang Incident” as an example of group incidentin transitional period, by keeping the dissemination of information as the main line, ittries to analyze the psychological motives behind the incidents, and explore itspotential risks.Bases on the empirical investigation into “Shifang incident” and datacollected and processed from SPSS statistical software, this article discovered that thesilence of the government and media led to information input dysfunction andimbalance of information dissemination and stirred the grass-roots “informationdeprivation mentality”.“Information deprivation mentality” reflects social members’deprivation and imbalance concerning information access and distribution, whichunderlies the grass-roots struggle as well as group incidents.The construction process of the risk of “information deprivation mentality” bythe media is associated with the polarization of grass-roots’struggle and protest, andgenerates series of concomitant risks. As the field of social information graduallytransforms to a synopticon, more grass-roots participation is needed in a mediacommunication system. Therefore, the media should make adjustments in these areassuch as role, communication rights, communication mode and the boundary ofagenda-setting,in order to improve the grass-roots communication plight, relieve their“information deprivation mentality”, and evade risks of group struggle and protestgradually.