Study On Media’s Social Responsibility And Evaluation System In Our Country

As early as the 1920 s, the concept of “social responsibility” has been presented by the western society. With the constantly changing of social environment, theoretical cycle and corresponding business cycle have also conducted constant demonstration and amendment. Up to now the thought of enterprise social responsibility has been widely accepted by scholars, enterprises, governments and the public, and the connotation and extension thereof have become gradually clear and definite. With the continuous development of economy and in the international background of economic globalization, social responsibility of Chinese enterprises has also undergone theoretical blank, following blindly, even serious lack, and then setting up, rapid development. Even though there still has a big gap compared with international advanced level, we are delightedly to see that in China, government, theoretically cycle and business cycle have all highly regarded the social responsibility that enterprises should undertake. Also the effect is very notable.China’s reform and opening policy has gone through 30 years, and achieved remarkable results, but also paid a heavy price. International political and economic environment have been increasingly complex. Domestic sensitive issues such as corruption, the people’s livelihood have become so obvious that the social contradictions increase sharply, public opinion environment deteriorates, and even the suspicion of socialist core values appears. China’s social development has entered a critical period. Some scholars have said, "if a society is a big ship, the media is like a lighthouse, guiding the ship way forward..." Media, if can play their guiding role at crucial moments, really assume social responsibility, is of great significance to the development of the society as a whole.At the same time, the media, as part of the social system, is in a critical development period. On the one hand, the media also has experienced the baptism of the reform, facing the industrial development turning point. On the other hand, the media is suffering a spread of information technology which brings traditional ecological subversive, and facing the brutal competition in the industry. The situation is increasingly serious that all kinds of media in order to improve the ratings(rate of audience, release rate, CTR) and then get the favour of advertisers to get economic interests badly ignore the social responsibility. Therefore, both from the perspective of social development and the perspective of media development, how the media should undertake the social responsibility, and what social responsibility the media should undertake emerge and become the focus of public concern. This thesis is in this context setting the "media social responsibility" as the research object.The purpose of this study is: confirming the special significance of the media’s social responsibility in our country at present stage, and defining the media social responsibility connotation in comply with the present stage in national conditions and public opinion of China; establish a market-oriented quantitative evaluation system managed by a third party of the public, and rely on market forces to promote the media to take the initiative to fulfill the social responsibility as a long-term mechanism; explore the relationship between the media social responsibility fulfillment and the media business as well as economic benefits. If both are positively correlated, that means the media who performs the social responsibility well can have more faithful audience, and then can win the favour of advertising agency, advertisers so as to realize the economic benefits. Then, the media will naturally take the initiative to fulfill social responsibility.The research idea of this thesis is first to define the connotation of media’s social responsibility in our country, and on this basis to explore and induce the media social responsibility evaluation index system conforming to China’s national conditions and public opinions, further to construct the evaluation model by using the quantitative method to evaluate Chinese media’s social responsibility performance; and then to select the sample media for the application of the evaluation system to verify the evaluation effect; finally to make empirical research on the evaluation system, so as to demonstrate the relationship between the evaluation index built in this thesis and the audience’s loyalty, and then to demonstrate the correlation between the media’s social responsibility and media business development and economic benefit.This thesis is divided into six chapters, of which Chapters Two, Three, Four and Five are core parts of this thesis. Specific contents of chapters are as follows:Chapter One: Introduction. The Chapter mainly introduces the thesis’ research background, related literature review, the purpose of this study, the research approach, technical route and content framework. Focus of this chapter is to review the current research status that have been found and then to look for the problems therein, and then form the research points of view and the innovation points of this thesis on the basis of enlightenment to this study.Chapter Two: The connotation of media’s social responsibility, the environment and the present situation in our country. Media’s social responsibility originated from corporate social responsibility but is different from the corporate social responsibility, and so far there is no unified concept and cognition, especially the media’s social responsibility in our country. On the one hand, different from the western media, China’s media is with the political, cultural and economic triple attributes, namely the "mouthpiece", spiritual culture attribute and the commodity attribute; on the other hand, under the influence of international environment and domestic environment, China’s media has obvious national characteristics and time features. This chapter mainly involves the related concept and connotation and theory and analyses the media inside and outside environment and social responsibility of the status quo, lays the foundation for the construction of follow-up evaluation system.Chapter Three: Building the media social responsibility evaluation index system. This chapter mainly conducts the induction of media social responsibility evaluation index system. First, this chapter adopts literature correlation method to compare the similarities and differences between Chinese corporate social responsibility and the media’s social responsibility, the similarities and differences between social responsibility of the western media and the social responsibility in Chinese media, points of experts and scholars are summarized for the media social responsibility evaluation dimension, and then explores the theoretical basis of the evaluation index from law, professional ethics, sociology, journalism and communication theories related to media’s social responsibility, finally with more case analysis method typical cases happened in recent years in our country have been deeply analyzed, and induces the media social responsibility evaluation index system considering China’s national conditions and public opinions. Then according to the summarized evaluation dimensions, and by questionnaire investigation, collection of a large audience opinion of evaluation index are conducted. The SPSS20.0 software is adopted to make factor analysis for recycled effective questionnaire. Through layers of screening, finally forms the "right to supervise, correct guidance, media content, social moral and credit stain" five evaluation factors, and "information pilot, internal audit, the principle of party spirit", etc. 17 secondary evaluation index.Chapter Four: The Building and application of the media social responsibility evaluation system model. This chapter uses the fuzzy hierarchy comprehensive evaluation method(FAHP) to build the mathematical model of evaluation system and get practical application to examine the effects of evaluation method. The author selects 20 samples of media from five types of media of the political, social, financial, sports and entertainment, and according to the evaluation index system designs the questionnaire, with each media getting 20 questionnaires and a total of 400 questionnaires issued Finally 376 effective questionnaires are recycled. Through the various indicators of the questionnaire statistics, it is concluded that the social responsibility of each media comprehensive score and level. The author not only analyzes overall evaluation results, but also carries on further analysis from the points of news category, media size and media type. It is concluded that the finance and economics, sports media have higher social responsibility evaluation than entertainment media, the bigger media has higher media social responsibility evaluation than smaller media, and radio and television media as well as newspapers have higher social responsibility evaluation than media network media.Chapter Five: Empirical research on the media social responsibility evaluation system. The author believes that the purpose of evaluation is to play a role in promoting the long-term supervision and, so the function and significance of the evaluation result is more meaningful than the evaluation itself. This chapter further explores if the implementation of the media social responsibility will affect the audience’s attitude to the media, namely loyalty. This chapter designs the questionnaire about evaluation index and customer loyalty, through a questionnaire to get the audience’s loyalty to the media if they fulfill the social responsibility. The author adopts SPSS20.0, to conduct reliability and validity analysis, including using the Cronbach’s Alpha to make option weight coefficient analysis and exploratory factor analysis(EFA), using Cronbach’s Alpha to analyze option weight coefficient, and establishes structural equation model by use of authenticated sample data thriugh Amos 7.0 software, to explore the relationship between the right supervision, media content, correct orientation, social morality and credit stain and the customer loyalty, and then explore the relationship between the media social responsibility and customer loyalty. In this thesis, through the empirical study it is found that the audience will have higher loyalty to the media who perform higher level of social responsibility. This shows that the media through good performance of social responsibility can get more loyal audience, and then get the favour of advertisers, to achieve economic benefits. This research conclusion means, with the establishment of the evaluation system and evaluation mechanism, the implementation of the social responsibility will become actively conscious behavior of media, and the media will pursue "ratings" automatic correction of previous single behavior, to fully fulfill their social responsibility as the core of career development.Chapter Six: Conclusion and Prospect. This chapter mainly summarizes the viewpoint and the conclusion of this thesis, and from three aspects of "attaching great importance to the news legislation, striving to build a healthy social environment, using market forces to promote the improvement and implementation of the media social responsibility evaluation system", the author gives suggestions on the media’s social responsibility in our country.