Mainstream public opinion is a kind of positive public opinion, which can reflect the direction of social development, reflect the mainstream and essence of the times, and truly represent the will of the people. With the vigorous development of new media, especially social media in recent years, a new communication pattern has been formed. After the discourse power in cyberspace was "dispersed" to different channels, groups, platforms and even individuals, mass communication was largely replaced by focus communication. In order to prevent being marginalized, the mainstream media must actively grasp the initiative in mainstream public opinion and do mainstream public opinion work at all times and everywhere.
Who is dividing the mainstream media?
In the Internet environment, the ecology of public opinion has changed, and due to the characteristics of anonymity, timeliness, and interactivity, on the one hand, it has given public opinion more room for expression, and on the other hand, it has also brought severe challenges to public opinion guidance.
Short videos have become the "starting place" of public opinion events. On the one hand, short videos have the characteristics of mobile and fragmented communication, which accelerates the explosion of public opinion and prolongs the fermentation time of public opinion. On the other hand, the production of video information has lower requirements for producers, and is very emotionally appealing and incendiary, and netizens are very easy to have a sense of substitution, and it is easier for "public opinion storms" to occur and spread.
The live broadcast room has become a "fermentation pool" for the outbreak of public opinion. In the Internet celebrity anchor "scolding netizens" incident, Dongfang selection "small composition" and other events, the public opinion in the live broadcast room showed a certain "fan circle" characteristics. In the fan-based live broadcast format, the public opinion literacy of some anchors and the MCN institutions behind them is worrying.
Young people have become a "conspicuous bag" of public opinion influence. In recent years, in the discussion of international and domestic affairs, the status of young people as "conspicuous bags" has gradually been revealed, such as netizens posting on Xiaohongshu "reporting Cathay Pacific for discriminating against non-English speaking passengers", which has set off a wave of controversy at home and abroad, and the image of the companies concerned has been affected. For example, a large number of Xiaohongshu users have spontaneously used the same avatar and nickname to form an anonymous army of "momo". All this shows that the risk of online violence and the spread of rumors hidden behind young people is worth being wary of.
The mainstream media is prone to fall into the misunderstanding of the mainstream public opinion guidance
In the era of new media, the traditional mainstream media is challenged by the new online media, and its media market position and public opinion guiding role are gradually declining, and they are increasingly falling into the embarrassing situation of passivity and alienation. In order to strengthen the guidance, influence, and credibility of news and public opinion, the mainstream media needs to get out of the following four cognitive misunderstandings.
Myth 1: "Elite thinking" is better than "traffic thinking".
Propaganda work is the work of winning the hearts and minds of the people and rallying the people. If the articles, videos, and interactive products published by the mainstream media are not read, or readers do not want to read them, or they cannot understand them, then they will not be in their minds at all. The mainstream media should break the "elite thinking", not put readers out of the way of seeing and not seeing, appreciating and not appreciating, and should jump out of the internal cycle of "feeling good about themselves", deeply understand the meaning and mission of the word "propaganda", and use "elite thinking" to occupy the "traffic highland", so that readers are willing to listen and truly accept mainstream public opinion.
Myth 2: "Balancing force" is better than "-for-tat".
Not all statements made by the mainstream media will become mainstream public opinion, and how to think about issues and express opinions is very particular. In the environment of Internet public opinion, pluralistic trends of thought on the Internet have emerged one after another, and different ideological views have stirred up each other, especially in the field of ideology, which is engaged in sharp confrontations all the time. The mainstream media must not only dare to express their own views and firmly express their stance on major issues that have attracted the attention of the masses and are major issues of right and wrong, but also be good at expressing their own views, and grasp the timing, strategy, and intensity of their voices, so that the voice of mainstream public opinion can both penetrate and be good at it.
Myth 3: "Professional terms" are better than "online language".
The voices of the mainstream media are often composed of experts, scholars, and professors, and on the one hand, they are authoritative and academic, and on the other hand, they are also prone to be didactic and instructive, and they are easy to give people the impression of being "on top" and psychologically distance themselves from the masses. The mainstream media should not be blindly confident, empathize with the masses, and be good at learning from the masses, communicate with netizens equally and sincerely from the perspective of the general public, do not talk about dry truths, refuse to preachy tone, and abandon material-style summaries. Only by expressing the "steaming" point of view with "down-to-earth" words can mainstream public opinion win resonance and penetrate into the hearts of the people.
How can the mainstream media do a good job in guiding mainstream public opinion?
Hegel said, "Public opinion is the inorganic way by which people express their will and opinion." "The mainstream media is a bridge linking the party, the government and the people, and we must always use the right way to guide public opinion on a healthy track.
Build your own channels and stick to users in a way. In the age of social media, the vast audience is no longer satisfied with the superficial meaning of timely and massive information, but also needs to grasp the truth and deep reasons behind a series of information. Public trust and authority are the core advantages of mainstream media, and in-depth reporting is the magic weapon of mainstream media. The mainstream media is inseparable from the vast number of objects to do a good job in guiding public opinion. To this end, mainstream media should take the initiative to build their own platform-based media, gather sticky users, and reunite public opinion to guide the audience base.
Innovate discourse and be emotionally close to the user. Different media platforms, many audiences are overlapping, different public opinion environments, the emotional needs of the audience are also common, the mainstream media's online public opinion content should not only spread the mainstream culture, but also meet the needs of personality, to find the greatest common divisor between the mainstream and personality. The mainstream media needs to move from "living in the temple" to "the voice of the people", so as to build an equal interactive relationship, achieve people-friendly communication, improve the influence of public opinion guidance, and form a consensus.
Monitor the dynamics of public opinion and guide users ideologically. In the era of new media, there is an uproar in the online public opinion field, and if public opinion is careless, it will ferment out of control and go to extremes. To this end, the mainstream media should pay attention to monitoring the development trend of public opinion, analyze the characteristics and trends of public opinion through technology, seize the opportunity, set the agenda, and guide public opinion to the right path in a targeted manner, so as to avoid disorderly development. Mainstream media should not only build a network communication "matrix" of "three micro and one end" (WeChat, Weibo, micro video, and client), but also gain insight into the pulse of public opinion on social platforms, identify "spoilers" such as water armies on social media, and improve the controllability of sudden public opinion.
Cultivate "official idols" and cater to users in terms of interests. The first is to develop a team of opinion leaders. Opinion leaders often provide information to others in interpersonal communication, and at the same time exert influence on others, and the mainstream media has gathered a large number of well-known reporters, editors, and hosts, many of whom are opinion leaders on social media, as the center and starting point of the "secondary communication" of mass communication, and are the influencing factors that cannot be ignored in online public opinion. Cultivating "official idols" will help the mainstream media to speak out in online public opinion.
In the era of omnimedia, the mainstream media is facing more challenges, and there are more ways to do a good job in guiding mainstream public opinion, and being an "all-rounder" and "all-rounder" is not only the core competitiveness of the mainstream media, but also the need of the times to promote the high-quality development of propaganda, ideological and cultural work.