On Chinese Farmers' Discourse Right In People's Daily An Analysis On The Coverage Concerning Agriculture, Rural Areas And Farmers In People's Daily From 2001 To 2007

The fact that the Chinese farmers are deprived of discourse right is an important component of the issues concerning agriculture, countryside and farmers in China, to solve which it is also a bottleneck that must be removed. The Mass Media, as a significant component of the public sphere, are supposed to play a major role in ensuring farmers' discourse right in a society. Probes into the existence of discourse of Chinese farmers' in the Mass Media will ultimately contribute to encouraging farmers to take initiative serving the construction of New Countryside as well as to the establishment of a harmonious and democratic society.Based on quantitative and qualitative analysis on news coverage on issues concerning agriculture, rural areas and farmers from the year of 2001 to the year of 2007, during which Chinese government had gradually strengthened policies to promote the development of agriculture, the prosperity of rural areas and the affluence of farmers, this dissertation probes into the features of the existence of farmers' discourse in People's Daily as well as its changes under the influence of changing policies. Compared with other mere theory analysis on the same issue, this quantitative research leads to more convincing and detailed results. But in the meantime, since there is no former research frame to refer to, flaws of this research would be unavoidable.Anyhow, some discoveries are made. It is found out that, in general, the government takes up the most discourse space on issues concerning agriculture, rural areas and farmers in People's Daily. Rather than speaking up for themselves, the farmers are largely in a state of "being talked about" by others; when they are given the chance to say anything in the newspaper, what they express by both their verbal and non-verbal languages is mostly only to offer justification to government's work by depicting a overwhelmingly positive picture of their own status quo, in this way, the contents of their speeches are actually extensions of the government's discourse and results of news selections guided by the government's propaganda needs. What they say would not help assert their own interests. As more and more policies concerning agriculture, rural areas and farmers were adopted during the selected years, the corresponding issues received more and more attention from People's Daily, which, however, didn't lead to a consistent expansion of farmers' discourse space, which expanded for a short time but then shrank again.