Ecological Analysis Of Growth Of The Media

Taking Hubei Zhiyin Media Group as a case study, this dissertation tries to describe and analize the course of media growth by applying theories, models and methods of ecology, theories of the growth of enterprises as well as theories of Communication and Journalism, aiming to explore the Mechanism, the Route, and the Law of It.From the view of ecology, this paper gives a new definition of media growth:The course of media growth is a process of achieving continuous niche expansion of the media through acquisition and use of internal and external resources. There are several ways of niche expansion:Competition or predation (merger), exploration in potential niche and positive construction of niche as well the enhancement of its environmental suitability. Media, Media Industry, and Media Enterprises respectively correspond to community, population, and species in the social system, and have different functional structures, so the contents of study are also different. In the level of community (media), close attention is paid to the evolutionary rules and paths of the media; in the population (media industry) level, focus is on its diversity and factors which decide the population growth and fluctuation; in the species (media enterprise) level, emphasis is put on the adaptation and reaction of individuals to the environments (natural environment, social environment and competitors). They have a strong correlation between each other, in which media enterprise is the unit of construction of media industry, while media industry is a unit of the construction of media community.The dissertation illustrates the performances of niche selection, niche breadth, niche expansion, niche construction, and niche separation in the growth process of media enterprises, and explains the evolutionary logic of the media in different phases of growth. The media enterprise has specific choices and challenges in each growing stage. Effective identification and construction of special competitiveness help media enterprises to select appropriate niche and establish appropriate strategies, so as to lay a solid foundation for optimizing resource allocation and contending for market commanding heights. The general steps of media enterprises'niche strategies are as follows:firstly, developing an ecological system and occupying a favorable niche; secondly, maintaining a virtuous circle of the ecosystem, and expanding the niche timely; thirdly, building a core competitiveness, and establishing a favorable competitive status; fourthly, keeping up with the evolution of surrounding members in the ecosystem, and avoiding replacement or excess by competitors; fifthly, paying close attention to environmental change, reconstructing the ecological order at the moment change occurs so as to break through limiting factors for a new life.conducted thorough investigations and comprehensive surveys of the Group by way of literature researches, field investigation and depth interviews, and collected a great deal of detailed and first-hand information. On the basis of these, the author sorted and analyzed these materials with related theories. Research shows that the trend of the 27 years's growth of Hubei Friends Media Group is generally a combined S-shaped curve, presently reaching its prime time of stability yet vitality. This paper points that the extraordinary growth performance of the Group lies in its accurate identification of needs at the beginning of its foundation and its occupation of the particular and favorable "beautiful human, beautiful human nature" niche, which contributed greatly to the laying of a solid foundation for the Group's growth. The maintenance of the Group's sustained driving force for innovation counts on its outset into the market and the establishment of a sound internal mechanism of competition adaptive to market competition, which helped to achieve the Red Queen synergistic growth effect. Meanwhile, the Group used its ecological niche to build a positive role to create a favorable environment and achieved a sustained and steady growth by constantly breaking through the bottleneck of its own growth.From a micro and macro perspective, the paper also analyzes some pitfalls in the process of the group's growth:long listing process, difficult overseas expansion, slow creation of all-media, and the ups and downs of the New Weekly etc. All these obstacles blocked the growth of the Group, in which China's media policy was the key limiting factor. From the perspective of ecological niche width, the paper analyzes the rise and fall of cases such as Work and Friends·Inspiration, then points that the niche breadth of media products is set too wide, which reduces the efficiency of their existence and results in the loss of strong competitiveness. An empirical analysis was also done, from the perspective of niche overlap, to uncover the causes of weak growth of such magazines as Friends (overseas edition) and Friends' Digest. From the perspective of ecological factors, the paper analyzes the failure of Business Masters and the causes of "Friends'Style", pointing to the fact that the mismatching of ecological factors and the destruction of balance are the main causes.Based on the investigations of Zhiyin Media Group, the dissertation concludes that Chinese media's healthy and sustained growth can be expressed as an s-type growth. Following such a mode, the media can make a sustainable development, obtain a certain self-adjusting function, automatically track changes in the ecological environment, and eventually achieve steady growth. There are some necessary conditions to make the combined S-type curve growth come true:first, the growth space must be expanded constantly. Without the space for growth the curve can not extend upward. Second, the limiting factors which hinder the growth of media enterprises must be broken. If not, there will be no positive feedback in the process of growth, hence a new round of S-type growth will be impossible. Third, there must be innovation. The lack of innovation will result in the lack of ability to break through the limiting factors. Fourth, there must be conscious and courageous involvement in competition. Without competition, there will be no incentive to innovate.