Study On South Honeysuckle Rumor Event From Communication Perspective

Since July 2013, with a series of Hunan TV news reported, "South honeysuckle" as a hot word broke into public view. As time went by, the event developed from the Chinese Pharmacopoeia renamed South honeysuckle as Lonicera in 2005, gradually evolved into a unscrupulous company hired network promoter to spread rumors about South Lonicera, and Honeysuckle renamed was traced to involved corruptiotion 2014.The South honeysuckle has become the focus of mass media attention, and showed different tendency in the media portray process. By analyzing the event, the author found out that though the event was regarded as a rumor, the fact was that it was a special kind of communication phenomenon. However, there was few researches about such kind of rumor which in fact was out of nothing.This paper took communication studies as a research field and took the south honeysuckle rumors event as the study subject. The author will sort out southern honeysuckle events, incidents background, existing facts, lately status and the controversial focus in the case. On the basis of previous studies, this paper summarized the case’s character which was distinguished from rumors and gossip, and explored why it was defined as rumors and widespread. This paper points out that Hunan TV news broadcast and other media not only use of media agenda-setting function to clarify some untrue statements about the South honeysuckle, but also made a value judgment that the event was all about a rumor in the public’s mind.In addition, the paper also explores the social context and inspiration of southern honeysuckle events. In fact, whether we called it rumor or gossip or other else, we should pay attention to the metaphor behind it: Risk that technological society has brought to us, the vagueness of honeysuckle itself, relative departments lack of supervision and complex media environment...they were answers to the question why the event happened. In this perspective, for other uncertainty things which similar to the South honeysuckle, this paper sounded the warning bell.Compare to previously objective and passive social dimension, in the end of this paper, the author took initiative to analyze the absence of media journalistic professionalism, such as value judgment bias, reported authenticity vague, lacking the depth of excavation and so on.Further more, the paper explored on how to deal with uncertainty reported object, thereby to reduce, or even to avoid similar incidents occurred like south of honeysuckle rumors event.