A Comparative Study of Emergency Coverage on People's Daily Newspaper and Its Sina Weibo account - In the case of the "TianjinExplosion"

AbstractIn current society, social media play an increasingly important issue role. When Emergencies Occur, They exert great influence on the society, as well as on the traditional media. This research AIMS at Contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of the differences between the traditional mass media and the social media Regarding the news coverage of social emergencies, in particular, the Chinese environment. The objects of this research are the People's Daily Newspaper -the most influential newspaper in China and its Sina Weibo account - @ People's Daily. I chose Sina Weibo as one of the media platforms of ice Because of it is the most popular microblogging portal in China and has great influence among Chinese people. In this thesis, crisis communication is used as the theoretical framework. Content analysis is used as the method to analyze the Collected Data. A specific event- "Tianjin Explosion" has been chosen to conduct the research. The result of the research indicates thatthere are some similarities and differences of the emergency coverage on the People's Daily Newspaper and @ People's Daily. Both media platforms focus on the crisis-stage and paid attention to the dissemination of the information about the emergency itself. However, the People's Daily Newspaper has stronger government control than @ People's Daily, and mostly speaking for the government, did not show much attention to the AFFECTED people and Their Families, Whereas posts on Sina Weibo are more sympathetic and there are more critical posts on @ People's Daily. Another difference Is that news on @ People's Daily is timelier than the People's Daily Newspaper. Furthermore, this thesis Also Provides some suggestions about how the media Should be improved in covering social emergencies in the future.Keywords: People's Daily, traditional media, social media, social emergency