Author(s)

Yilei Jiao

Corresponding Author

Yilei Jiao

Abstract

On April 18, 2020, four children were buried and killed in an accident at a construction site in Yuanyang County, Henan Province. When dealing with the incident, the local county government clashed with the media and journalists, which triggered large-scale public opinion. This paper will investigate the opinions of Chinese netizens on the measures taken by the Government of Yuanyang County to deal with the public opinion crisis through questionnaires. The study found that Chinese netizens expressed outrage at the bullying behaviors of local officials and their disregard for the legal rights of journalists. This paper argues that the reason why local officials behave like this is that they do not straighten out the relationship between the government and the media, so they refuse the media to exercise the power of supervision over the government. This paper also argues that local government officials should improve their media literacy on the one hand, and on the other hand, they should establish the awareness of speaking out for self-justification. These measures may also have a positive impact on other county-level governments.

Keywords

Public opinion crises, Journalist, County government