Intercultural Research On The Portray Of Female Images In Chinese And American Newspapers

In the field of media, compared with other media, some news media such as newspaper have become the major channel for the modern society to obtain information and certain authoritative symbol due to their confinement of the content and special features of truth and seriousness. Presently, feminist media cultural researches have entered a prosperous stage and have attracted extensive attention both at home and abroad. These researches analyze the structure of gender power so as to evaluate and judge the roles mass media play in the construction of gender from the perspective gender. However, Media does not exist independently in social and cultural system. It is the carrier of social culture and meanwhile constructs social culture. It is intimately related with various aspects of society, such as politics, economy, culture and history.The creativity of our research lies in its combination of "gender perspective" and the methodology of "intercultural research" to analyze the construction of female images in newspaper news reporting in order to explore the similarities and differences of Chinese and American women's culture and social positions as well as their relationship with gender and communication. Meanwhile, it analyzes women's survival environments in media and the distribution of rights and resources in the whole social system from the macro social structure so as to expound the causes for the gender inequality and disclose the real intrinsic mechanism of gender prejudice in diverse social and cultural contexts. The intercultural research of gender and media is helpful for us to analyze and do research on the representation of gender discourse in the field of communication in global scope in combination with the broad social-cultural context. In this way, we can compare the similarities and differences of Chinese and western gender and media research so as to probe deeply into the research theoretically by integrating it with the political, economic and cultural development, as well as the historical and realistic backgrounds related to feminine problems. The comparison of construction of female images in Chinese and American newspaper news reporting is conducive to expound gender problems in mass meedia from a new perspective.This research selects three newspapers such as People's Daily, Xin Min Evening News, The New York Times to contrastively analyze the reporting of female characters and the construction of female images (the portray of female images including the female images in political news reports, the female images in social news reports, the female images in the female character features in news reports, the female images in fashion and recreational news reports in Chinese and American newspapers)in news reports by way of quantitative and qualitative research. The research includes the analysis of the current state of the reporting of female characters in the dominant newspapers of the two countries, the proportion of reports compared with that of male, the functions women perform in the events being reported. It also analyzes these data from the perspective of gender to see whether they reflect the real proportion of women in media with fairness and balance and whether there exist the phenomena of strengthening role stereotypes. This research focuses on the sex and gender by way of intercultural comparison to dig into the roots of female's subordinate position in diverse cultures and societies. It also explores the co-relation between gender and communication, analyzing women in marginal positions in the process of media production so as to build up the knowledge system based on women's self-awareness and feminist subject.Through the comparison and analysis of the portray of female images in Chinese and American newspapers, the dissertation draws the conclusion that with more and more women participating in the mainstream social culture, their appearance and discourse exist in every aspect of social life. Both Chinese and American newspapers present positive portray of female images in public spheres. However, in newspaper reporting, there exist different ideologies of gender regarding specific news statements including the objects, events, attitudes and ideological direction in the reports, so there exist diversities in the portray of female images in Chinese and American newspaper reporting in different cultural, historical, political, economical and social background. The comparison of the similarities and diversities of the portray of female images in Chinese and American newspaper reporting is conducive to our exposition of gender in mass media from a new perspective.