Chinese Government Disaster Communication during the Zhengzhou Rainstorm Crisis

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2024 session is Jintao Zhang, whose interest is in the Chinese government’s social media crisis response to the Zhengzhou rainstorm. This occurred in July 2021, and resulted in substantial damage and loss of life.

How did the Chinese government use social media, and especially Weibo, during this crisis? What communication strategies did it adopt, and why? How were these influenced by the nature of authoritarian governance in China? This study explored these questions by exploring the activities of some 73 accounts that operated at four level of governance, and coded these for their approach to the crisis.

Posts with disaster reporting and information updates dominated substantially, especially at the beginning of the crisis; several themes also interrelated with each other. These included disaster relief and rainstorm information; public guidance and emergency recovery information; and emergency and rescue updates. Different levels of government emphasised these frames to a different extent. These also had different effects.

The leadership frame was especially strong with national government accounts, and an achievements frame was often worked to present disaster relief efforts in order to generate what in China is called ‘integrative consensus’ between state and people.