A Few Suggestions on the Governance of Online Public Opinion

It has been proved that once an emergency occurs, it will mostly be reported by the media and paid attention by netizens, and the public opinion response of the relevant departments and their disposal actions are in the spotlight of public opinion. Especially with the popularization of the Internet, cell phones and other new media, everyone has a microphone, everyone is a spokesman, the media is everywhere, everywhere, the dissemination of information and the generation of public opinion through a variety of channels and at an unprecedented speed, but also for the emergencies of the public opinion response and its disposal of action to bring a serious challenge. In the face of this status quo, government and enterprise departments to do a good job of public opinion crisis management have what key points?

I: Collection of Public Opinion Information

Today, the Internet has become the main ground for the outbreak of public opinion crisis events (public opinion itself is not negative, it is a neutral word; it can be said that negative public opinion, or public opinion crisis events). According to the 41st Statistical Report on the Development Status of China's Internet, as of December 2017, the number of websites in China was 5.33 million (the latest statistics should have been released in early July, so update them). In the face of such a variety of network information, it is necessary to use network public opinion monitoring software in order to collect public opinion information related to oneself from it. At present, many domestic companies have developed a variety of online public opinion monitoring software, all of which can monitor the online version of traditional media, news websites, forums, blogs, microblogs, etc. in real time. However, in the process of software selection, it is important to pay attention to the comprehensiveness of the information captured. Take Sina Public Opinion as an example, in addition to its information capture of the whole network, it also exclusively owns the full amount of political opinion data on Sina Weibo.

Two: Predicting the trend of public opinion

The development of an online public opinion event is usually divided into four stages: latent period, outbreak period, spreading period, and recession period. Before an emergent event receives wide attention from the society, it will go through a process of public opinion accumulation and fermentation (this process is not slow now, and many events are strong outbreaks in a short period of time). At this time, public opinion is not yet fully revealed, mostly hidden, in the stage of quantitative change before the outbreak, public opinion has different views, and has not formed a more concentrated **** the same topic and a stronger unifying force, so this stage is the best time to respond to public opinion. Relevant government departments and enterprises should maintain sufficient sensitivity after receiving early warning information about public opinion pushed by public opinion software, so that they can detect the first signs in time and deal with them quickly. For example, the Jingdong Liu Liu incident is a typical case of wrong response.

Three: correctly release information

In the face of a complex social environment and network environment, certain online public opinion information inevitably erupts into a public opinion crisis event. Things have developed to such a point that the only way to calm negative public opinion is to release information correctly. For the main body of information release, the release of information should be rapid and timely, truthful and objective, concise and clear, unified, straight to the point, and respecting public opinion. The first release of information on emergencies should be early to tell the facts, heavy speaking attitude, prudent conclusion; find out how much, know how much, how much to publicize. When releasing information, the wording should be strict and accurate. Correctly releasing information can not only calm down negative public opinion, but sometimes even turn a crisis into an opportunity, which requires relevant staff to learn more about excellent public opinion response cases in their daily work (for specific cases, please refer to "How Did They Do It in the Face of Negative Public Opinion?)

Four: Treat the media well

It has been proved that facing the media honestly (in China, the word "relationship" is easy to be misunderstood) can help in the handling of emergencies. Governments or companies should take the initiative to provide journalists with timely and accurate information about an incident, so that journalists have official channels to obtain official and authoritative information. Information should not be blocked and facts concealed from legitimate news organizations as well as from journalists, so that journalists are not misled by speculation and rumors. In the process of receiving journalists, it is important to strategically learn in detail about the journalists and the media they work for, and to understand their interview intentions, locations and targets, so as to make proper arrangements and respond correctly. It is important to avoid head-on conflicts with journalists and antagonism. Similarly, in their daily work, the staff of the relevant departments should actively establish good communication with the media.