Recently, the topic of "public opinion anxiety" at the grassroots level has attracted much attention.
At the beginning of this year, the deputy director of a township police station in a certain province stabbed the other party in charge of mediating a dispute after a verbal confrontation, and then turned himself in. Previously, the party was dissatisfied with the mediation result and posted relevant videos on the Internet many times.
In the past decade, Zhang Xuelin from the Media Development Research Center of Wuhan University and the China Rural Governance Research Center of Wuhan University has traveled to more than a dozen provinces to conduct comprehensive research at the grassroots level. She felt that the public opinion work of the township and township governments was becoming more and more important.
"Their mentality is very complicated," Zhang Xuelin said in an interview with The Paper, adding that the spread of new media is a "black box" for many grassroots cadres, who are worried about evolving into a "negative public opinion image that the whole people pay attention to", and are anxious about top-down political accountability, as well as "being held accountable regardless of right or wrong".
In Zhang Xuelin's view, for key events, the grassroots government's blind control of information disclosure may be counterproductive. They need to learn how to communicate effectively with the people, and the higher-level government also needs to investigate the facts and analyze the people's demands in detail.
"A healthy society needs to be based on conventional response and handling mechanisms", she believes that events are often complex, and the public opinion market should not only have emotional arguments, but also professional rational thinking.
[The following is the conversation between the surging news reporter and Zhang Xuelin]
"Grassroots cadres must learn to communicate with the people"
The Paper: In your research, have you heard grassroots cadres mention the topic of "public opinion anxiety" and how do they conduct public opinion monitoring?
Zhang Xuelin: We have investigated topics related to government propaganda, and we have interviewed comrades in charge of public opinion work at the township level. They mentioned that with the rise of social media, cyberspace governance and online public opinion early warning are becoming more and more important in the propaganda work of township governments, and the weight of public opinion work is becoming heavier and heavier, and the pressure on grassroots cadres has also increased.
Moreover, the human resources of grassroots governments are limited, and many grassroots cadres are "generalists", such as a propaganda committee member of a township government, in addition to his own work, he also has to participate in other lines of business, and public opinion work accounts for only a small part of the work.
Grassroots governments mainly monitor online public opinion through manual monitoring and pay attention to local social platform dynamics, which has a certain lag compared with the governance of cyberspace by higher-level governments through big data technology.
As far as I know, most of the local public opinion that the grassroots government learns about local public opinion comes from feedback from the higher-level authorities, and only a small part of it is discovered through self-monitoring.
Therefore, the pressure on "public opinion" of grassroots cadres mainly comes from two aspects. On the one hand, relying on manual monitoring, many times the information is in the blind spot of their own vision, and when the superior monitors the public opinion and feeds back to the grassroots, the grassroots will respond and deal with it in a timely manner. On the other hand, grassroots governments need to take measures as soon as possible to avoid the fermentation of public opinion for the automatically monitored public opinion.
Of course, if local finances allow, the grassroots can hire a third-party technical system to monitor public opinion.
The Paper: In your research, are there any cases of grassroots cadres resolving public opinion before it ferments?
Zhang Xuelin: Last year, a small fire broke out in Zhejiang Province, which was discovered by the township and township, and fed back to the grassroots cadres to intervene in a timely manner. The cause was a fire in a small high-rise building with four or five floors, and the surrounding residents uploaded photos of the fire scene to the self-media platform, spreading false information. The fire department has extinguished the open fire, and the relevant departments have contacted the resident who uploaded the video to communicate and clarify the facts, and the resident has taken the initiative to delete the inaccurate information.
However, due to the fact that many netizens have reposted it twice, in order to avoid uncontrollable factors, grassroots cadres have asked residents to update the true and comprehensive information of the fire on the self-media platform. It can be said that it is a case of township propaganda cadres taking the initiative to discover public opinion and defuse the crisis.
The Paper: How do grassroots cadres view the "public opinion" they have to face?
Zhang Xuelin: In my opinion, their mentality is very complicated. One of the "public opinion anxiety" stems from top-down political accountability. Based on past cases, once there is a major public opinion incident, grassroots cadres can easily be held accountable, which is related to their personal vital interests.
The second stems from the fear of unknown consequences. The law of communication of new media, as well as the law of traffic, is a "black box" for grassroots cadres. Even if it is a normal governance problem, grassroots cadres are worried that once they enter the Internet, they will be fermented and affected by the laws of Internet communication, and it will evolve into a negative public opinion image that the whole people pay attention to, which will deal a fatal blow to the local image.
This is a great test of the governance ability of local governments, many times the grassroots government is "crossing the river by feeling the stones", there is no one-size-fits-all "formula" that can be applied to the process, which is why grassroots cadres feel anxious.
The Paper: When faced with unexpected events, grassroots governments generally do not want to be paid attention to and reported, and even control information disclosure. What do you think of this phenomenon?
Zhang Xuelin: First of all, we are in the "post-truth era". Internet public opinion is very complex, the information is mixed, and it is difficult to distinguish between truth and falsehood. This is also the reason why online public opinion is difficult to control, and grassroots cadres will "talk about public opinion changes".
Second, if we blindly control information disclosure, especially such incidents that have become the focus of national attention, the more we cover up and control them, the more likely they are to play the opposite role as expected.
This involves the topic of how local governments can effectively communicate with the people, network communication has no boundaries, and cannot rely on the inherent path of territorial management in the past, and cyberspace is often cross-territorial and de-localized. For grassroots cadres, this is a completely new topic.
Grassroots cadres need to face the contradictions of the modernization and transformation of local governance. First of all, grassroots cadres need to recognize this contradiction, constantly improve their language skills in front of public cameras, and learn how to communicate and interact with the people through the institutionalization of public occasions such as media conferences.
In addition, the voice represented by the expert system that can restore the complexity of the event itself at the rational level and conduct in-depth analysis is also extremely important in the public opinion information market. However, how to improve media literacy among grassroots cadres is not an overnight task, and the public needs to have a certain amount of patience. The public opinion market should not only be emotionally debated, but also need professional rational thinking.
The Paper: With the development and change of the domestic social environment, has the way grassroots cadres deal with public opinion also changed?
Zhang Xuelin: Before the rise of the Internet, it was difficult for an event to quickly rise to a topic of national concern due to the limitations of the communication space, mainly relying on on-the-spot reporting by professional journalists. Grassroots cadres are not very anxious about public opinion, and they may use traditional control methods to prevent reporters from publishing articles in order to achieve the goal of controlling public opinion.
But now that information in cyberspace has changed a lot, everyone has a microphone in their hands, and the exposure of information is no longer dependent only on professional journalists. Local Internet celebrities, self-media, and ordinary people can expose clues. After information enters cyberspace, it is likely to rise to become an online public opinion event. Therefore, in the Internet era, local governments are facing more diverse subjects.
At present, the common method is still public opinion monitoring, so as to detect in time, prevent early, and resolve conflicts as soon as possible, so as to avoid escalating into larger public opinion events.
"The grassroots are worried that it will become a public opinion incident, and they will be held accountable regardless of right or wrong"
The Paper: What do you think of "online petitions"?
Zhang Xuelin: For grassroots cadres, letters and visits are a very important task, and they are also a headache.
The so-called "online petition" refers to the public reporting the situation to the government through online channels, and submitting opinions, suggestions, or complaints. People's demands can be divided into three types: one is reasonable demands, the other is unreasonable demands, and the other is somewhere in between, which is reasonable but not completely legal and compliant, or has problems left over from history and cannot be resolved quickly.
At a time when various supervision systems are relatively developed, grassroots cadres are able to respond positively to and deal with reasonable demands, and there are relatively few phenomena of passing the buck to each other and delaying urgent matters.
The difficulty lies in the fact that although the demands of some people are reasonable to a certain extent, there are problems left over from history that cannot be resolved immediately. The parties took advantage of the psychological mechanism of grassroots cadres who were afraid of arousing public opinion, exposed it through the Internet, and the high-level government put pressure on the grassroots government after monitoring it.
If the grassroots cannot adhere to the principles, they may use the benefits to resolve the contradictions by "spending money to buy peace". In rare cases, petitioners have tasted the sweetness and turned into profit-making petitions. For local grassroots cadres, this kind of case is under great pressure to govern, and it consumes relatively more energy and resources.
The Paper: Do you mean that under the pressure of political accountability, local cadres may become vulnerable?
Zhang Xuelin: Yes, on the one hand, there is concern about political accountability, and on the other hand, after the Internet is exposed, political accountability and public opinion supervision are integrated, and the government will also worry that the people will be affected by public opinion and become emotional, and in the process of expressing their demands, they will point the finger at the courts or other front-line departments.
A normal and healthy society still needs to be based on a regular response and handling mechanism. Otherwise, once a problem arises, the cost of governance will increase significantly without going through conventional channels and directly relying on online public opinion and media to solve the problem.
The Paper: Under normal circumstances, people may not choose petition channels for appeals that can be resolved through conventional channels. Under what circumstances is it necessary for the public to promote the solution of the problem through online petitions and other channels?
Zhang Xuelin: The petition system is a special system of rights and remedies, and it is a window for the central authorities to understand social conditions and public opinion. If there is only one level of upward reflection channel, once it is blocked by local cadres, there is no way to guarantee the rights of the people.
A common type of appeal is a new contradiction that has emerged in a transitional society, involving cross-level, cross-departmental, and even cross-field, the main body of responsibility is not very clear, and it is easy to encounter mutual blame in the process of doing things, and the cost of doing things is high. For example, the "unfinished building project" you mentioned, in the past ten years of urbanization development and construction stage, some cities have been more radical, in recent years, the economic development environment has changed, the capital chain of real estate developers has been broken, and there are many unfinished buildings, and buyers are indeed victims.
This kind of appeal is not just a case, and the government needs to effectively respond to the demands of the masses through institutional or institutional innovation. The masses did not receive a timely response to the regular channels for expressing their demands, and online and offline petitions provided a channel for relief.
Is it possible for the government to promote the solution of the problem by improving the legal system and changing the pre-sale system of commercial housing? The key is how to respond to and deal with public opinion so that a balance mechanism can be reached between the central government, the local government, and the masses.
The Paper: In the mainland's administrative system, grassroots governments usually refer to government agencies at the county, township, and neighborhood levels. What is the difference between the "public opinion anxiety" of the grassroots government and the higher-level government?
Zhang Xuelin: The mainland has a five-level government system, and in terms of political sequence, it is the central government first, followed by the provincial, prefectural, county, and township levels, with a total of five levels of government. The village level belongs to the villagers' self-governing organizations, and we generally refer to the village committees and urban neighborhood committees as semi-administrative organizations, which do not belong to civil servants in their status, but they play a very important role in the construction of grassroots political power in China.
The high-level government focuses on "governing the officials", while the grass-roots government mainly "governs the people", directly facing the people to handle affairs, respond to demands, and deal with contradictions.
The anxiety of high-level cadres can be delegated from the county level, to the township level, and the township can also be at the village level. However, village cadres are not civil servants and do not have a career establishment, and from a legal point of view, they receive subsidies rather than salaries. Therefore, as a villager self-governing organization, the pressure of political accountability in the face of negative public opinion events is not so great as that of township cadres.
However, with the gradual administrativeization of village-level organizations, village cadres have become professional. From not working off work to being paid for shifts, village-level cadres also have a certain amount of accountability pressure, but this pressure is still different from that of government officials.
Therefore, for township and town cadres, they cannot directly transfer the pressure and anxiety of public opinion to the village cadres, and ultimately it is up to the township level to take care of the problem. If it cannot be handled at the township level, it is necessary for the township-level departments and the county and township departments to cooperate with each other to deal with the problem.
In July 2021, Zhang Xuelin (second from left) interviewed farmers in Zhejiang Province on topics such as rural social relations and smallholder economy.
The Paper: Is there a corresponding accountability mechanism for political accountability caused by "negative public opinion"?
Xuelin Zhang: This is a relatively complex topic, and there are no objective and clear quantitative indicators.
In the process of interviewing grassroots cadres, the grassroots cadres themselves will assess the points in their work that may cause negative public opinion, or events that may trigger political accountability. When similar incidents occur in other regions, grassroots cadres can also have a clear idea of the results of similar incidents through news reports and official reports.
Under normal circumstances, if public opinion is discovered and dealt with in a timely manner, it is unlikely that there will be accountability, and if there are more serious negative consequences, the risk of accountability will appear.
Sometimes, the emergence of public opinion is not directly equated with the problems of local governments and grassroots cadres. What the grassroots cadres are worried about is that once it becomes a public opinion incident, the higher authorities will be politically accountable regardless of right or wrong, and this is the source of anxiety for the grassroots cadres.
Therefore, the current accountability system is like a sharp sword hanging over their heads, and if every incident can be analyzed objectively and rationally in accordance with the law, grassroots cadres will not feel so much pressure and anxiety.
The Paper: In your opinion, grassroots cadres have very limited ways to deal with public opinion?
Zhang Xuelin: That's right. Grassroots cadres receive the requirements issued by their superiors, and as front-line cadres, they need to face the contradictions and the parties concerned. Now that we are a society governed by the rule of law, the mainland has strict regulations on the restraint of grassroots cadres, and grassroots cadres can only do their work at home repeatedly through understanding and reasoning and emotion. Even if the demands put forward by the parties are unreasonable, the grassroots cadres cannot make substantive restrictive measures.
"Investigate realistically and analyze the specific problems of the people's demands"
The Paper: Some experts believe that the "public opinion anxiety" at the grassroots level is mainly related to the "public opinion cleanliness habit". What do you think of this phenomenon?
Zhang Xuelin: "Public opinion cleanliness" refers to zero tolerance for public opinion, and the reason may lie in two points: First, it is worried that once public opinion rises into a major negative event, the higher-level departments will carry out political accountability; second, grassroots cadres do not understand the laws of Internet communication, and there is great uncertainty about what kind of incident will ferment into a larger network public opinion event on the Internet. In the face of this uncontrollability, grassroots cadres have no way to screen and judge, and can only try to avoid all incidents that may rise to public opinion.
The Paper: The problem that is widely criticized by the public is that some grassroots cadres are not able to disclose the ins and outs of the response to the public in a timely and clear manner, but give an ambiguous response with a lag. What do you think of this phenomenon?
Zhang Xuelin: This involves the ability of grassroots cadres to respond to online public opinion and the ability to communicate with the people through the Internet. Many grassroots cadres are talents who do things, but the ability to communicate and introduce the whole story of the incident clearly and fluently to the public is exactly what they are not good at. Even if grassroots cadres have the self-awareness of ability improvement, promotion is not achieved overnight.
In addition, in the public space facing the whole society, personal images, some unconscious small movements, or expressions of words and sentences may be magnified and interpreted, and these interpretations are uncontrollable. Therefore, some grassroots cadres are afraid of saying the wrong thing and are worried about uncontrollable consequences.
The Paper: As far as you know, is there currently any training aimed at improving the ability of grassroots cadres to respond openly?
Zhang Xuelin: According to my research, I have not heard from grassroots cadres. But some time ago, I was researching in Anhui, and they had a live broadcast room for village cadres, which was broadcast live on the Douyin platform to convey policy information and answer questions in daily governance. For example, if the masses want to know about the subsistence allowance, the subsidy policy for the disabled, the subsidy policy for the elderly, land issues, etc., they can enter the live broadcast room to ask questions.
I think this is a good exploration to accumulate experience and training in public response from the live broadcast, and improve the core literacy of grassroots cadres.
The Paper: Do you have any suggestions for governments at all levels in the face of "public opinion anxiety"?
Zhang Xuelin: I think, first of all, the high-level government needs to be moderately relaxed in its response to online public opinion. When public opinion incidents occur, what is more necessary is to investigate realistically and analyze the specific problems of the people's demands in detail. For grassroots governments, grassroots cadres need to improve their ability to govern cyberspace in the new media era, as well as communicate and respond to the public, and effectively improve media literacy.
The Paper: How can we achieve "moderate" attention to public opinion?
Zhang Xuelin: This is a difficult point in work, how to avoid the central and local power "as soon as it is managed, it will die, and as soon as it is released, it will be chaotic". I believe that we need to constantly adjust in practice and continue to approach a balance point in governance, which is still in the exploratory stage.
"Grassroots governance is not black and white"
The Paper: What kind of attitude should ordinary people have towards online public opinion?
Zhang Xuelin: First of all, ordinary netizens should express their emotional views on the premise of having a comprehensive understanding of the incident. Ordinary people are easy to side with the weaker side, for example, when the people put forward demands, netizens are easy to understand that "officials bully the people" to support. But many times, the events themselves are complex. There have been many reversals of public opinion before, reminding us that we need to have a more rational attitude towards online public opinion.
On the other hand, I believe that professional journalists also play a very important role in guiding the trend of online public opinion. Compared with ordinary netizens who express their emotions and opinions, professional journalists need to bear the responsibility of showing the full picture of the incident. In media reports, it is necessary to be as comprehensive and objective as possible, avoid hearing only the voice of one party, and try to restore the complexity of the event itself, rather than the authenticity of the part.
The Paper: In the process of media reporters, many times the parties who are on the weaker side are eager to be interviewed by the media, but the government departments related to the incident may be more inclined to treat it coldly and refuse to accept interviews, what do you think of this kind of situation?
Zhang Xuelin: I think the root cause of the dilemma faced by media journalists when interviewing grassroots cadres is that the media and local governments have not established a benign communication and interaction relationship.
For example, when I go to a local area for research, as a university teacher and research scholar, local cadres are relatively welcome. Because from an academic ethics point of view, we ensure that their personal information is not leaked, and our research interviews do not have negative consequences for them. However, as journalists, grassroots cadres are afraid of being exposed, so there are difficulties in reporting on them.
As for the root cause of the difficulties, grassroots cadres tend to think that the media are a kind of supervision over the government. Fear that the media will side with the vulnerable, against the government, or that the full truth of the matter will not be fully revealed. If local governments have positive experiences that need to be publicized, they will want the media to report on them.
Everyone will state what is good for them. In my opinion, the important function of the media is to be able to present the complexity and full authenticity of the event itself, but it is often difficult to achieve full truth, and this is the dilemma of the media.
However, at the beginning, only partial truth was presented on the Internet, and as the full truth is put in front of netizens, the attitude of netizens may also change.
The Paper: Some grassroots governments may generalize some social news into negative public opinion, what do you think of this phenomenon?
Zhang Xuelin: Local governments generally have the mentality of "family ugliness should not be publicized", and pursue positive external publicity. Once negative public opinion expands in the jurisdictional area and is labeled as negative, it may affect local development and form stereotypes from the outside world.
However, in the new media era, the awareness and ability of local governments to communicate with the public need to be transformed, and the transformation is accompanied by labor pains, and simple control methods may backfire and cause greater online public opinion. Netizens are not completely emotional, and if the government learns to take the initiative to disclose information and dispel the doubts of the public, negative public opinion may turn into positive public opinion.
The Paper: In your opinion, how should media and public opinion supervision play a positive role?
Zhang Xuelin: In my research, I found that the TV and radio political columns made by the county-level media and the prefecture-level city media were strongly promoted by the relevant departments of the local Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision, and the local government took the initiative to use the media to play the role of public opinion supervision and rectify the inaction and disorderly actions of cadres.
The other type is the "off-site supervision" of the mainstream media, which is also a form of supervision that local cadres are more afraid of. For example, the recent "incident of township cadres blocking farming" in Kailu County, Inner Mongolia. A few grassroots cadres have an arrogant attitude toward the masses and have been punished for their inappropriate words and deeds. However, grassroots governance is not black and white, and the incident itself is complex, and the "land supplement contract fee" in Kailu County is one of the disposal methods adopted for the pilot work of efficient use of new cultivated land in the "three land adjustments", that is, the paid use fee charged by the village collective for the new cultivated land.
In grassroots governance, grassroots cadres basically adopt soft and hard tactics in order to push things forward. Not all of the people themselves obey the rules of the law. Once the content of the conversation is intercepted and exposed, it is not enough to focus only on the cadres' inappropriate words and deeds, and public opinion supervision needs to detach itself from the incident itself and discuss universal issues such as the nature of rural land and the distribution of benefits.