A Study Of The Influence Of The Internet Use On Government-public Relationships

Since the entry of mankind into post-industrial society,government public relations in the modern sense came into being due to the wave after wave of social resistance movements and public crisis resulting from modernity issues.Government public relations are generally embodied in that when the government carries out social management,it can maximize the public’s trust,support and understanding,and achieve good interaction with the public.Effective government public relations have both the legitimacy of government power and the effectiveness of government achievements.Nowadays,the impact of Information and Communications Technologies(ICT)expands almost every aspect of economic,social and political life.And internet,as a platform of information distribution,interaction and expression,public engagement,has become an important media for government to establish and cast influence on public relations.Internet has brought significant changes to the way of political engagements and discourse expressions of individuals.At the same time,it also poses both opportunities and challenges to government-public relations.Therefore,in this context,it is of great significance to study the impacts of Internet use on government public relations.Based on theoretical explorations and practical analyses,this study selects the data of Chinese Social Survey(CSS)in 2015 to explore the impacts of Internet use on government public relations from the two aspects of government performance evaluation and public non-institutionalized participation.Firstly,through theoretical analysis,it explores the influential mechanism of Internet use on government performance evaluation and non-institutionalized participation,and puts forward research hypotheses.Secondly,the OLS regression model and the Probit model are utilized to verify the impacts of Internet use on government performance evaluation and non-institutionalized participation,that is,whether Internet use challenges government public relations;Subsequently,the 2SLS method and the IV-Probit method are employed to analyze the endogeneity of the two regression models,and to test the effectiveness of “Proportion of Internet high-frequency users” as a tool variable for Internet use.Furthermore,the three methods of“redefining dependent variables”,“adopting new data for regression” and“adopting new tool variables” are applied to verify the robustness of regression results.Finally,this study proposes countermeasures and suggestions,and carries out future research prospects based on the empirical results and the current development mode of Internet and government public relations.The results indicate that(1)Internet chatting has a significant negative impact on government performance evaluation,while Internet reviews and Internet organizational activities have a negative impact on government performance evaluation as well.In addition,government performance evaluation is significantly lower than women’s,and higher economic status evaluation,stronger social trust and fair perception will also have a significant positive impact on the government performance evaluation of the public;(2)Internet reviews and Internet organizational activities have a significant positive impact on the public’s willingness of leapfrog petitions,especially the impact of Internet organizational activities.Meanwhile,high-frequency chatting or social activities via the Internet will also significantly increase the public’s willingness to participate in irrational right-protection actions such as demonstrations and strikes.(3)In the context of controlling endogeneity,Internet organizational activities have a significant negative impact on government performance evaluation,which is greater than the negative impact of Internet chatting on government performance evaluation.In addition,in the absence of endogenous issues,the use of Internet chatting and Internet reviews have a significant positive impact on the irrational right-protection tendency;(4)The robustness test states that Internet chatting and Internet organizational activities still have a significant negative impact on government performance evaluation,while Internet reviews and Internet organizational activities have a significant positive impact on the tendency of non-institutionalized participation,which are consistent with the findings of previous study.To sum up,it can be seen that the Internet does bring certain challenges to government public relations.In the process of network governance,establishing a legal and orderly Internet platform,perfecting the network governance system,enhancing the institutionalized capacity of public political participation,and reshaping the good relationship between the government and the public are essential ways to promote modern governance and achieve effective social governance.