Reasearch On The Function Of Mainstream Media In Risk Communication In The New Media Era

Now we are living in a risk society in which risk has been the subject of human life. In the risky society, humans highly depend on the mass media which plays a key role in the social developing process. Through risk communication, all the sectors of society can work together to deal with the globalized risks to ensure a steady modernization construction. The mainstream media plays an important role in the risk communication, including the risk warning, information communication, consensus guidance and risk education. In the new media era, media integration has become a trend and the function of mainstream media has changed already. By collecting related books and analyzing the case of reports on “The March 1st terrorist attacks in Yunnan Kun Ming Railway Station” of the sina weibo @People’s Daily, this paper probed how the mainstream media should function in risk communication in the new media era.First of all,this paper explains the related concepts of risk communication. The risk has the characteristics of objective, unpredictable, globalization, and knowledge-dependency.I defines the risk communication from two research paradigm shift of risk communicationSecondly,this paper studys on the function of mainstream media in risk communication. It turns out that the mainstream media plays different roles in different stage of the risk. In warning period, the media need to perceived risk warning; When the crisis break out, the media have obligation to report information timely; when the risk fade away, the media need to guide public opinion and coordinate aparts of society; in the risk recovery period, the media need to summarize experience and educate the public. But in fact, these features is restricted by all kinds of objective and subjective reasons.Thirdly,by analyzing the case of reports on “The March 1st terrorist attacks in Yunnan Kun Ming Railway Station” of the sina weibo @People’s Daily, this paper probed how the mainstream media should function in risk communication in the new media era.At last, this paper gives countermeasures, and points out that the government should perfect system of publicizing government information. The mainstream media should take advantage of new media feature to strengthen the capability of risk perception and warning, crisis reporting, consensus guiding, and strengthen the public risk education, risk response capability at the same time.