From Elitism to Civilianization: The Mobilization of "Civilian Hero Narratives" in Public Crises

Initiating large-scale social mobilization in public crisis management is a unique advantage and an effective means for the state to prevent and resolve major risks, but due to the extreme lack of cases of positive social mobilization in crises, the mechanism of achieving effective social mobilization is not clear, and there is an urgent need for the theoretical and practical communities to summarize empirical experiences of achieving positive social mobilization in crisis management. Based on this, through the empirical analysis of the rescue cases of Chongqing mountain fire, we find that the media's "civilian hero" narrative in crisis management breaks the rigid pattern of "hero deification" and "elite propaganda" in traditional disaster reports, and is based on the "civilian hero" character narrative, "emotional mobilization" narrative theme and "individual presentation" perspective strategy, which is able to construct a public crisis "heroism" faith consensus, social mobilization resonance and common action. The media's "civilian hero" narrative has become a precise fulcrum for prying the lever of social mobilization, providing a new path for modern social crisis management.