Research On Local Government’s Countermeasures To Deal With Network Public Opinions On Public Emergencies

The report of Communist Party of China’s 19 th National Congress pointed out that it is necessary to ‘adhere to the correct guidance of public opinion,attach great importance to the construction and innovation of communication means,and improve the dissemination,guidance,influence and credibility of news and public opinion.’ The Decision of Nineteenth Central Committee of the Party’s Fourth Plenary Session emphasized the need to ‘improve the working mechanism for adhering to the correct orientation of public opinion guidance,’ and raise the work of public opinion guidance’s importance to the same level of adhering to and improving the socialist system with Chinese characteristics,and advancing the modernization of the national governance system and governance capabilities.Among them,it specifically pointed out the need to ‘improve the public opinion guidance mechanism for major public opinions and emergencies’,and put forward clear requirements for the work of public opinion guidance for emergencies.The guidance of public opinion in major public emergencies not only affects social stability and citizen stability,but also has great impact on the party and the government’s prestige among the people,as well as on country’s national image.Strong and effective guidance can help to promote the handling of public emergencies,increase government credibility,and maintain social harmony and stability.Improper guidance will lead to secondary disasters of public opinion and cause major losses.Therefore,in the era where everyone can become a source of information,how the government can effectively respond to the online public opinion of public emergencies and hold the voice and dominance of online public opinion in the hands of it has become a research topic of great significance and practical value.This paper takes the ‘1.13 road collapse accident in X city’ as the research case,adopting the public crisis theory,public opinion communication theory and network governance theory,systematically makes an in-depth study on the network public opinion generated by the accident.This is supported by practical arguments,and combined with the current situation of local governments’ response to network public opinion on public emergencies in China.This paper analyzes the main problems and causes of local governments’ response to network public opinion on public emergencies.The existing problems mainly include: weak information release ability,imperfect relevant laws and regulations,insufficient ability to analyze and judge network public opinion,lagging monitoring,and obstacles in response and guidance mechanism.The main reasons for these problems include: there are still shortcomings in monitoring,weak crisis awareness of relevant staff,weak sense of responsibility to actively solve problems,imperfect construction of network public opinion team and so on.Finally,according to the existing issues and causes,bringing up suggestions on the local government countermeasure’s to deal with network public opinion of public emergencies from around six aspects: Based on existing issues and causes,to perfect theinformation release,to perfect relevant legal guarantee mechanism,to strengthen the ability of analysis,research and judgment of network public opinion,to improve the ability of monitoring and management of network public opinions.The paper also does great help on providing important theoretical guidance and reference for maintaining social stability and good government image.