Cascading Activation Of Media Frame In Public Issues

On July 28,2016,the central government released the “Interim Measures for the Administration of Network Appointment of Taxi Management Services” and the “Guiding Opinions of the General Office of the State Council on Deepening Reform and Promoting the Healthy Development of the Taxi Industry”,which recognized the “Net Cars” at the legal level.At the same time,the central government proposed the principle of “local localization management” for network vehicles,handing over the right to formulate policies to local governments,and urged local governments to draw up and implement relevant regulations before November 2016.This study takes the public policy topic of “Networking New Deal” as the research object,adopts the path of combining quantitative and qualitative,and selects 426 relevant media reports and 250 comments in Weibo of people's daily from July 2016 to October 2016.This research analyzed various actors' frameworks in the network car issue,compared the framework differences between different actors,focused on the cascade of the framework between actors,and discussed the media roles and responsibilities in the waterfall effect.The study found that the framework definition and value judgments of different actors are various for the issue of the network car,and there is a framework competition between them.As the policy maker,the government generally tend to define policies from the “legalized regulatory framework”.In the formulation of policy rules,the central government not only gives the framework a strong civilian color to enhance its resonance,but also devolving power to local governments to “adapt to local conditions”,which promoted the scientific formulation of policies.Local governments refined the grand framework of the central government in the formulation of specific rules and given them local characteristics.In contrast,the social elites have more diverse meanings for the network car issue,in addition,the explicit opposition in the elite makes the issue debate possible.By emphasizing the consequences of local policies and the spirit of the central government,the network car companies have developed a complete set of “markets/industries competition framework” by exploiting the cultural values of strong resonance,such as favorable to people,fairness and discrimination,which reached a framework balance with the “legalized regulatory framework” cited by local governments.The discourse expressions of ordinary people in traditional media and new media channels are quite different.People in traditional media often use the “people's livelihood framework”,while the users of Weibo platform hold the “new policy invalid framework” most.The difference reflected the solification of source's identity and the disorder of the new media discourse.Entman's research on the "cascade model" is based on the foreign policy after the 9/11 incident in the United States.Under the special media system in China,the network car policy is a low-threshold public issue,so the corresponding change has taken place.In the spread of American external issues,the debate between the elites of the parliament and the experts made the flow of cascade possible.As for the Chinese media,who is leaded by the party,the responsibility for “uploading and releasing” drives the media to cross elites and directly connectswith the government.Different natures' media maintain a relatively consistent relationship with the government in the framework bias and reporting position.In this process,the local media played the role of “localized management” and played the role to supervise the local government.After the emergence of the elite debate,the media did rely on the source of opposition elites,but this opposition was not blindly magnified,but was firmly controlled in the traditional value system.In new media environment,the public identity has undergone changes from “audience” to “user”.The social media has opened up the power channel of cascades and has become a new “pump” to help people's views to be conveyed upwards,despite the expression of “user” under the new mechanism is disordered and emotional,but it incites the power structure between actors in traditional cascades and promotes the realization of public discussion ideals.The deviation of the different actors presented in the media reports from the government-led framework confirms that the media is not a container for passive acceptance of government propaganda.The nature of the media itself determines its possibility as a public forum for the expression of social opinions,but at the same time,the media is also one of the actors in the framework construction.From the genre of its reports and the reference to the source,the attitude and position of the media organization can be seen.In the new media era,media workers should pay attention to the expression and dissemination of online public opinion and strengthen their supervision and guidance.