On People's Daily's Coverage On Issues Concerning The Construction Of New Countryside

Based on the Agenda Setting theory, this dissertation conducts a research on the coverage of issues concerning the Construction of the New Countryside in the New Countryside Weekly in People's Daily from 16^th, October 2005, which week witnessed the opening of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and in that meeting the policy of Constructing a New Countryside was proposed, to June, 2008.First, a general analysis on the coverage in the New Countryside Weekly is carried out, with news elements such as topics, news sources and reporting objects and so on analyzed. It is found out that topics like agriculture industrialization, agricultural structure adjustment and the display of new images of farmers are the most popular; besides, the paper takes agriculture as the main reporting object, while attentions have also been paid on rural areas, farmers and the government organs.Second, the dissertation analyzes the topic changes over the three years, thus to bring us to an understanding of the correlation between the polices and the topic selection of the New Countryside Weekly.Third, it makes a content analysis on the coverage of agriculture and village cadres, and further summarizes the images of the two objects reflected in New Countryside Weekly and points out the problems.By the content analysis on the coverage in the New Countryside Weekly in People's Daily, this dissertation finds out that the supervisory role of the media is played down under the influence of the guidelines of positive publicity, as a result, while the fruits are abundantly reported, problems in the process of New Countryside Construction are not adequately revealed, which is a common problem that other agriculture media should take care of and try to avoid.