A Study On The Strategy Of Chinese Star Athletes’ Crisis Apology Statement（2008-2021）

With the support and attention paid to the sports industry by my country’s national policies,the comprehensive strength and international influence of competitive sports have been greatly improved.On the road of China’s great strides towards a sports power,the complexity of the macro communication environment and the particularity of star athletes’ identities will inevitably cause a group of athletes who are famous for their competitive sports careers to have an image crisis.When star athletes face this crisis,how to choose an apology strategy according to different situational crises and maximize the effect of the apology statement in the crisis to alleviate the crisis,and at the same time restore the damaged image as much as possible,has become the focus of this study.key issue.This paper uses text analysis,comparative analysis and case analysis to sort out and analyze the samples of Chinese star athletes’ apology statements from 2008 to 2021 searched on Baidu News,Sina News,and CCTV news platforms.Combining the Situational Crisis Communication Theory（Situational Crisis Communication Theory）proposed by American scholar Coombs（W.T）and the Image Repair Theory（Image Repair Theory）theory proposed by William L.Benoit,this paper analyzes the 23 problems that Chinese star athletes fall into.The 34 apology text samples involved in the crisis were deeply explored through statistics,induction and comparison.Starting from the status quo,the 23 crisis events in the sample are divided into five major types: business and business crises,character and moral crises,violations and illegal crises,injury and retirement or sudden crises,and unexpected crises.Crisis types,and analyzes the differential damage that different types may cause to the image,and then analyzes the current situation of the apology statement from the subject,object,release channel and release timing of the apology statement;Classification summary.Secondly,from the selection characteristics of the apology strategy,it starts to match the crisis event type and the apology text strategy,and analyzes the effect;the subsequent embedding of SCCT theory and the extended athlete reputational crisis concept（Athlete Reputational Crisis）and IRT theory summarizes the characteristics of sample discourse,and uses Liu Xiang’s withdrawal from the competition twice in 2008 was a case study,and a more specific situation and strategy matching discussion was conducted.Then it points out the common problems in the apology statements of Chinese and foreign star athletes and discusses the similarities and differences in the apology statements of Chinese and foreign star athletes by means of comparison.Finally,the optimization strategy of "two precautions,three discourse upgrades,and four overall principles" of the Chinese star athlete’s crisis apology statement is proposed.In a highly free online environment,the apology statement issued by star athletes in the face of negative public opinion is one of the strategies to restore their image and alleviate the crisis.If this method is used improperly,it will lead to a secondary crisis.On the basis of combining theory and thinking,it is expected to provide practical suggestions and coping strategies for the handling of public relations and daily maintenance of the image crisis of this group of star athletes in the future.