A Brief Analysis of News Collecting and Editing Strategies of Public Health Emergencies from the Perspective of New Media——Comparison of the SARS Epidemic and the COVID-19 Outbreak

Abstract

Public health emergency, especially contagion such as the SARS epidemic in 2003 and the COVID-19 outbreak recently happened, has been one of greatest challenges in human beings' history. How the government handles the epidemic situation will deeply reflect its political system and executive ability, as well as the capacity of all sectors of society to deal with public emergencies. The emergence and continuous development of new media technologies have promoted the transformation of news gathering and editing methods. Because of the experience gathered in the news coverage during SARS, the response speed of new media was greatly accelerated with the media literacy and professional level improved, which matters a great deal to the balance between the opening of information and public opinion control. Thus, government is capable of carrying out controls in a more effective way. Based on the research in the two cases, this paper aims to discuss the changes in efficiency, content transparency and form diversification of news collection and edit, with the discovery of some imperfections exposed in new media, in order to propose targeted improving measures.