The causes of enterprise public opinion crisis and response methods

I. The concept of corporate public opinion crisis

Public Opinion (Public Opinion) refers to the public **** opinion, which consists of eight factors: the subject of public opinion (public), the object of public opinion (phenomenon, problem), the public opinion itself, the quantity of public opinion, the degree of intensity of public opinion, the duration of public opinion, the function of public opinion, and the quality of public opinion ( Chen Lidan, 2012). Crisis (Crisis) refers to sudden or catastrophic accidents, events, etc. that suddenly occur or may occur to jeopardize the image, interests, and survival of an organization. In this paper, enterprise public opinion crisis refers to the sudden outbreak of negative public opinion that puts the enterprise into the predicament of losing public trust, declining product sales, evaporating market value of the enterprise, and damaging the image of the enterprise.

Here, this paper makes a special distinction between negative public opinion and public opinion crisis. When faced with negative public opinion, the first thing a company should do is to determine the severity of negative public opinion to decide whether to take action. The reason for this is that on the one hand, negative public opinion always exists for enterprises, and no enterprise can be 100% perfect, so a moderate amount of negative public opinion is normal, and is also conducive to enterprises to reflect on their own production and operation, and improve the quality of products and services. Once it exceeds a certain limit, the public opinion will greatly affect the daily production and operation of the enterprise. According to operations research, it is generally believed that the 0.618 golden ratio is a reference boundary, that is, in the public more than about 1/3 of the people with **** the same negative opinion, then this opinion is likely to be quickly accepted by the whole public, so that the negative public opinion will evolve into a corporate public opinion crisis, which the enterprise should be more vigilant.

The causes of the public opinion crisis

(1) The problems of the production and operation of the enterprise itself are the fundamental factors of the formation of the public opinion crisis

As an important organization of the society, the enterprise extends its tentacles to all aspects of the life of the people through the provision of products and services to the people. The company's business is also an important organization in the society. Inevitably, enterprises have become the focus of both traditional and private media. The production and operation of enterprises can not be flawless, more or less there are some problems, some problems in the public tolerance range, public opinion will also give enterprises the opportunity to reform, but some problems are very serious, touching the public's important interests, these problems will become a public opinion crisis fuse.

(2) The public's uncertainty and irrationality drive the evolution of the public opinion crisis

The public, as the stakeholders of the enterprise, is always concerned about the enterprise's movements. The public is the only one who has the right to know what is going on in the world, and the public is the only one who has the right to know what is going on in the world. As a principal, the enterprise has a lot of information that the public does not have as an agent, such as the real situation of the enterprise's production and operation of the public can not be present to investigate and supervise, because the cost of doing so is too high, which forms an information asymmetry between the enterprise and the public. In this case, enterprises have a tendency to lower the quality of their products and services in order to seek higher profits, that is, moral hazard. Consumers will also tend to be skeptical of the enterprise, and this sense of uncertainty makes consumers extra sensitive to the public opinion of the enterprise, which also accelerates the spread of negative information about the enterprise.

At the same time, the flow of information in the group waterfall, the group polarization of the information dissemination mode also led to the individual in the group in the loss of reason, thus deviating from the assumption of the rational man, their behavior is no longer subject to their own personal rationality constraints, but in the group in a herd, the extreme form of performance. This makes it even more challenging for a company in a public opinion crisis, because the emotions of the group are very difficult to control.

(3) Mass Media Promote or Create Public Opinion Crisis

The mass media build a virtual world outside the real world, and the virtual world reflects the real world and influences the real world. The mass media is the carrier of public opinion, and plays an extremely critical role in the enterprise public opinion crisis.

On the one hand, the ever-changing network technology creates an equal and free atmosphere for public opinion, but at the same time, rumor mongering and defamation are also endless. The economics of anonymity and linking make rumor mongers outside the law. On the other hand, the media industry's... The profit model of the media industry has led to a tendency for media professionals to report on unusual events to increase ratings, circulation, and click-through rates. And often tend to exaggerate and falsify facts to increase attention. "If the rules of the commercial game are sound, advertisers need the core value of the online community that has adhesion to members and products, and word of mouth rather than click-through rates; but in current China, because of insufficient commercialization and unsound rules of the game, the online community can only persuade advertisers, who are not discriminating and picky about this, with traffic." (Chen Lidan, 2012:21)

In fact, not only in China, but also in Europe and the United States, where the market economy is relatively mature, "click-through rate is king" is still the first element that shapes the content of media reports. U.S. White House spokesman Fleischer once lamented, "Weekdays the media seems to be a group of buzzing mosquitoes, every politician is afraid to avoid, hate to drive them all away, and once the crisis occurred, the media became a 20-ton elephant, to you straight over, this time you want to hide can not hide." The current operation of the media makes it happy to report and even create negative news about companies, often dealing a fatal blow to them.

(4) Industry vicious competition is an important source of negative public opinion about enterprises

Publishing negative news about competitors is a common means of industry vicious competition. The cost of rumor mongering is much lower than the revenue, many companies have taken this way to damage the brand image of competitors, and even specialize in planning some public opinion crisis. 2003, Mengniu's rivals used a flood of "fake news slander" to try to defeat Mengniu, and finally by Mengniu to find out and prosecute.

The difficulty of reversing public opinion

In a public opinion crisis, a company has to explain and clarify negative public opinion, that is, dispel rumors, in order to try to change the public's negative impression of the company. The difficulty of reversing public opinion is:

First, public opinion is related to an individual's inherent beliefs, which makes the individual always compare with his inherent beliefs when he receives new information, and if the new information is consistent with his inherent beliefs, it will be absorbed; if it is not consistent, in order to avoid the negative emotions caused by cognitive dissonance, the individual usually chooses to ignore this kind of information, and this is the biased absorption. It is possible that information that a company has debunked may be ignored by the public.

Second, any disinformation serves two purposes: it lets people who did not know about the rumor know about the rumor; and it tries to change the perceptions of people who already know about the rumor. Negative information linked to the enterprise, whether true or false will leave a bad impression in the public mind, affecting the reputation and authority of the enterprise, so try to avoid prompting the public enterprise and negative information. At this point, it is especially important to accurately determine whether the negative public opinion has reached the degree of public opinion crisis, if not, then there is no need to rush to dispel the rumors.

Third, existing iterative journalism prioritizes the time of publication over the correctness of the information, because the logic of iterative journalism is that earlier wrong information can be corrected by later correct information. The downside is obvious; once the incorrect information enters the human consciousness, few people question the correctness of the information, and few people keep track of the constant flow of new information in its entirety. For companies, negative information that has been sent out by the media, whether true or false, cannot be deleted, much less erased from the public consciousness.

Fourth, the possibility of enterprises to control the direction of public opinion

According to the formula of communication, we can see that the subject of public opinion (the public) and the degree of relevance of the object (the event or the problem itself) tends to exist objectively, and the public's ability to criticize is not something that can be grown overnight, and in order to reduce the dissemination of negative public opinion, the enterprise What can be done is to reduce the public's curiosity, uneasiness, and uncertainty through some measures, so as to achieve the purpose of controlling the spread of negative public opinion.

Fifth, the enterprise coping with public opinion crisis strategy

First, seize the moment, the army is precious

The evolution of public opinion is a process that can be roughly divided into two phases of latent public opinion and visible public opinion. The first one is the one with the most important and most important thing is the one with the most important and most important thing is the one with the most important. If appropriate guidance is provided when public opinion is in latent public opinion, it is easy to get better results; while the degree of difficulty in guiding manifest public opinion is much greater than that of latent public opinion. (Chen Lidan, 2012: 16)

Second, take the initiative to apologize, sincere communication

The more the negative public opinion of an enterprise brings to the public a sense of uneasiness, curiosity, and uncertainty, the more rapid the evolution of public opinion dissemination, the more difficult to control. At this point, the enterprise, regardless of whether in fact the enterprise is at fault or not, should be low profile and take the initiative to apologize, calm the public anger, and strive for more time to deal with the crisis. In addition to verbal apologies, material compensation is especially important.

At the same time, we need to communicate sincerely and provide the public with the "right" information to alleviate the public's anxiety, curiosity, and sense of uncertainty, and to improve the information asymmetry between the company and the public. It is worth noting that "correct" information does not necessarily mean that all the information is disclosed to the public, because some information may increase the public's fear, and the disclosure should be in favor of the enterprise.

Third, choose the right context to express the subject

The choice of spokesperson is critical. When the enterprise crisis situation is not clear, and even the enterprise itself does not know what the truth of the matter is, it is best not to push the first hand to the foreground. When a detailed understanding of the truth of the matter, and predicted the outcome, it can be positive with the stakeholders and the media contact, the appearance of the first hand, increasing the authority of the communication, more persuasive and sincere.

Companies should set up a crisis management team to maintain a consistent caliber within the company, and frequent changes in rhetoric will undoubtedly increase the public's sense of unease and uncertainty, and cause companies to lose the public's trust. Of course, the caliber is not set in stone. As the situation develops and the crisis evolves, the truth becomes clearer and clearer, and the spokespersons of the companies have to make adjustments to the content of their speeches.

In addition, companies can also ask the government and some credible organizations to speak. In a crisis, denial is often seen as sophistry, but governments have no stake in the crisis, so their viewpoints are easier to convince the public.

Fourth, the media, prying public opinion storm fulcrum

Mass media is the carrier of public opinion, is the promoter of public opinion storm or even the maker. The media as a beast of strong pressure, or ignore the "ostrich policy" is not desirable. Actively communicate with the media, using the media platform to release the "correct information" is the key to turn the crisis into an opportunity.

Enterprises should use a variety of media channels, not only to emphasize the traditional media such as television, newspapers and magazines, but also to pay attention to the role of online media. In fact, a lot of negative public opinion about the enterprise is from the network first rise, and then gradually get the attention of the traditional media. Similarly, enterprises can also take measures to form positive public opinion on the network first, and then get the attention of traditional media. This is a four-two-jackpot approach. Opinion leaders in the network media can become the right hand of the enterprise. Opinion leaders refers to the interpersonal communication network often for others to provide information, at the same time to others to exert influence on the "active", they play an important role in the formation of mass communication effects of the intermediary or filtering, by their information diffusion to the audience, the formation of information transmission of the two levels of communication. Opinion leaders need to be cultivated by enterprises in normal times, so that they can play a role in a crisis in a timely manner. Social networking platforms such as microblogging are also a powerful tool for insiders to communicate with the public. Microblogging bypasses journalists and ensures that information reaches the public quickly and completely without distortion.

Sixth, the crisis of public opinion focuses on prevention

The crisis of public opinion of the enterprise is like the emergency disease of people, focusing on prevention. Regardless of how smart the means of dealing with public opinion crisis, the public opinion crisis will cause irreversible loss of profit to the enterprise, the enterprise years of hard work to establish the brand image will be destroyed. On the other hand, with proper prevention, companies can focus on production and management, avoiding many unnecessary losses.

Preventing public opinion crisis, first of all, we need to operate in good faith, efficient management. The first step is to make sure that you have a good understanding of how to use the Internet and how to use the Internet in a way that will help you get the most out of the Internet. Only enterprises that effectively serve the public and realize a win-win situation with the public can do so for a long time. Every problem in the production and operation of the enterprise may become the fuse of the enterprise public opinion crisis, so the enterprise should be committed to constantly improve the management ability, reduce the production and operation of the problem, eliminate the hidden danger.

Furthermore, we should vigorously shape the corporate brand image. The company usually set up a good corporate brand image, when the crisis comes, it will be easier to get trust and support. On the other hand, the credibility of the enterprise is already full of holes, and the wall will be pushed when the crisis occurs.

At the same time, it is especially important to do a good job of monitoring public opinion. Public opinion monitoring requires companies to, on the one hand, formulate detailed judgment criteria and early warning programs for various types of crisis events, so that they can be prepared for a crisis and have the right medication in place once the crisis occurs. On the other hand, we should pay close attention to the development of the situation, timely transmission and communication of information. Maintain the right to be informed of the situation at the first time, to ensure that the enterprise to grasp the trend of public opinion in a timely manner.