At present, the municipal financial center is in a state of "absence" in grassroots social governance. The municipal financial center needs to re-examine and dig deeper into its governance value, and play an active role in risk management, guidance, public services and resource integration at the grassroots level.
The governance value of the municipal financial center
With its deep embeddedness in social, political, and cultural systems, media has become an important dimension of social construction, and an indispensable carrier, tool, and subject of social governance. In grassroots social governance, the governance function and value of the county-level financial center have been widely recognized, and it is considered to be the "bottom project" and "load-bearing project" of national governance. The function of the county-level financial center has also been transformed, from the function of information dissemination to the integration of information dissemination, guidance, public services and other functions. In media practice, the county-level financial center actively explores in "news + government service business", realizes the aggregation of news information, government affairs information and public services, actively expands activities such as online live broadcasting, and co-builds with the New Era Civilization Practice Center. The county-level financial center has played an active role in the dissemination of the party's policies, the guidance of public crises, and the resolution of social contradictions and conflicts.
Compared with the county-level financial center, the city-level financial center is in a state of "absence" in the theory and practice of grassroots governance. The construction of the municipal financial center is a key part of the "four-level integrated development layout", and it is also the focus of the current integration. In the four-level integration, the pace of integration at the prefectural and municipal levels is slow, and it is facing problems such as continuous loss of audiences, declining advertising revenue, serious aging of the team, and rigid systems and mechanisms. Therefore, the main task of the newly established municipal financial center at this stage is internal integration, optimization and adjustment of organizational structure, platform construction, and operation and income generation, so as to solve the existential crisis. In this context, the municipal financial center has not fully attached importance to the function of grassroots governance, nor has it actively participated in the process of grassroots governance, and its presence in the grassroots governance ecology is not strong. Corresponding to the practice of the media, there is relatively little attention paid by the academic community to the governance value of the municipal financial center, and the issue of its participation in grassroots governance has not attracted enough attention from researchers.
It is necessary to re-examine the governance value of the municipal financial center. Whether it is from the positioning of the municipal financial center, or from the relationship between the information dissemination system and the national governance system, as well as the connotation of grassroots governance, participation in grassroots governance is an important connotation of the construction and development of the municipal financial center. First of all, "mainstream position, comprehensive service platform, and authoritative information channel" is the positioning of the municipal financial center. In order to build a mainstream position and authoritative information channel, the municipal financial center needs to take into account the "uploading and disseminating" of party and state policies and regulations and the "downward situation" of the grassroots people's voices, so as to promote communication and dialogue between the prefecture and the public, effectively channel the emotions of the masses, and resolve the contradictions and conflicts within the city, so participating in grassroots governance has become an inevitable choice. In the process of building a comprehensive service platform, the municipal financial center should fully connect multiple subjects within the city and provide various services required by users. The municipal financial center is embedded in the public service system, which is also the process of its participation in social governance. Secondly, the information dissemination system and the national governance system are in an integrated and isomorphic state. The construction of a full-scale communication system is the goal of integrated development. The national communication system is the foundation of the national governance system, and the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity is inseparable from the supporting role of the national communication systemThe modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity has also pointed out the direction for the construction of the whole national communication system, and clarified the path and method of its construction. Therefore, the construction of the whole communication system should be carried out under the framework of promoting the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity. As an important part of the whole communication system, the municipal financial center must also adjust its strategic positioning from the strategic height of national governance, build it into a key platform for municipal governance, give full play to the governance function, and integrate into the national governance system. Thirdly, from the perspective of the connotation of grassroots governance, the city also belongs to the category of grassroots governance. Extending grassroots social governance from the county level to the municipal level is also an objective need of social governance. In the rapid social transformation, the social contradictions and conflicts between different groups have intensified, new social problems have emerged one after another, the conductivity of social risks has been enhanced, and many social contradictions and problems are no longer limited to the county area, and the interest groups involved are more diverse, the scope of influence is larger, and the degree of influence is deeper, so the overall planning, coordination and promotion at the municipal level have become an indispensable and important part of grassroots governance. With the rise of grassroots governance to the municipal level, the governance value of the municipal financial center is highlighted. Therefore, in order to do a good job in grassroots social governance, it is necessary to fully tap the governance value of the municipal financial center, and the municipal and county-level financial centers should work together to help the modernization of grassroots governance.
Role in grassroots governance
Serving grassroots governance is the only way to accelerate the development of in-depth integration at the prefectural and municipal levels. Integrated development is the practical basis for the municipal financial center to participate in grassroots governance, and the core of it is the capacity building of mediated connectionParticipation in grassroots governance is the value of the municipal financial center, and the most important thing is to achieve communication and dialogue between multiple governance subjects and reach a digital consensus. The municipal financial center plays an important role in the grassroots social governance, such as the coordinator of risk governance, the main position of guidance, the integrator of public services, and the integrator of social resources.
Coordinator of risk governance. Preventing, controlling, responding to, and handling risks have become an important part of grassroots social governance. The municipal financial center can play the functions of early warning, communication, and mobilization in risk management. Accurate and effective information dissemination is the foundation of risk management. The municipal financial center continuously strengthens the construction of communication capabilities, extends the information tentacles, responds to environmental changes in a timely manner, and issues early warnings for potential risks. Communication, collaboration and social mobilization are key aspects of risk management. As the most authoritative center within the city, the municipal financial center can become a platform for communication between multiple subjects, help multiple subjects quickly reach consensus, carry out concerted actions, and gather resources to attract multiple subjects to participate in risk governance.
* Guided main positions. The "mainstream position" is the core positioning of the municipal financial center, and the "comprehensive service platform" and "authoritative information channel" must be subordinated to and serve the construction of the "mainstream position" in the final analysis. The municipal financial center integrates communication resources within the city, builds a new communication platform, optimizes the content production process, and builds a smooth channel for information dissemination. The municipal-level financial center expands the main body of content production, absorbs multiple content producers into the process of content production, builds a content pool with mainstream values as the core, innovates discourse expression, realizes the co-construction of social consensus, and disseminates the correct orientation. In emergencies, the municipal financial center uses new technologies and new means such as big data and algorithms to capture the public's opinions and emotions in a timely manner, formulate targeted guidance strategies, and improve the efficiency of guidance. Through the agenda-setting function, the municipal financial center shapes its social cognition in the benign interaction with the public, guides the public's social judgment on major social issues, enhances the public's confidence in development, and improves the efficiency of grassroots social governance.
Integrator of public services. Providing public services is an important way for municipal financial centers to participate in grassroots governance. The public services of the municipal financial center are based on media connections. The fundamental value of media lies in connection, which can realize the connection of users, devices, services, and scenarios, and realize the seamless connection of various social elements and resources. Compared with the county-level financial center, the city-level financial center has a stronger connection capacity, and in the process of providing life services, it can coordinate more diversified life service providers through administrative and market-oriented means, and realize the accurate connection between the supply side and the demand side of life services, so as to fully meet the life service needs of urban residents. The city-level financial center is also better than the county-level in terms of the connection capacity of government data. By breaking through the data boundaries of different departments, enterprises and institutions, the municipal financial center continues to expand government functions, promote information sharing and functional docking of government resources within the city, and better serve grassroots social governance.
Integrator of social resources. To do a good job in grassroots governance, it is necessary to mobilize all kinds of resources, optimize the allocation of resources, and form a joint force for governance. The role of the resource integrator of the municipal financial center is reflected in two aspects: horizontal and vertical. From a horizontal point of view, the municipal financial center can optimize the allocation of news resources, administrative resources, market resources and social resources within the city. The resources here include not only material resources such as people, money, and materials, but also intangible resources such as information, culture, and ideology. The comprehensive docking of material resources and intangible resources can stimulate the governance potential of multiple subjects and improve the utilization efficiency of governance resources. From a longitudinal point of view, the municipal financial center is in the middle of the first, provincial and county levels, which belongs to the link of connecting the upper and lower, starting and turning, and is the bridge and link of the four-level connection. In this way, the municipal financial center can realize the effective docking of four-level resources, and the coordination and cooperation at all levels can play a greater role in mainstream value dissemination, mainstream guidance and social risk governance, and help improve the efficiency of grassroots governance.
(Author's Affiliation: School of Literature, Journalism and Communication, Yantai University).
Author: Zheng Qinghua **China Social Sciences Daily, Issue 2812, January 10, 2024.