Communication And Development - Survey And Analysis Of China's Mass Communication,

The theme of this paper belongs to the field of development communication study, thusa structure-functionism hypothesis is contained in it which takes the communication asone of the instruments to promote social development. The approach of survey is adopted to reveal and analyze the essence of the masscommunication process in our country. This paper concerns mainly about the relationshipamong communicators, audience and media contents, and tries to give out a wholedescription about the mass communication status quo. This paper is supported by a large-scale nationwide survey, which is conducted in 9provinces (cities) all over the country. This investigation involves the questionnairesurvey with a sample of 2,380, the interviewing with more than 50 media leaders, and thecontent analysis with more than 30 newspapers. The author makes uses of the material ofquestionnaire survey and content analysis in this paper. The main body includes 3 parts as following: 1. The audience's media behavior. The author studies (1) the interviewees' mediaappliances possession; (2) the interviewees' activities in leisure time; (3) theinterviewees' frequency, motivation, degree of gratification, and evaluation whenaccessing to the media, and to which media and contents the interviewees access; (4) theinterviewees' access to non-news media (magazine, book, video and movie), and (5) theinterviewees' recognition to the media's reports. 2. The individual characteristics' effect on the media behavior. The author discusses theinfluences caused by various factors such as education level, residence place and sex, andthe relationship among individual characteristics, media behavior and personalmodernization. It is found that "structural imbalance" related with individualcharacteristics exists in the mass communication process. 3. Content analysis with the media. 32 newspapers were drawn out from various areasof the country (19 Party newspapers and 13 citizen newspapers involved). Via elaborateanalysis about the theme of the reports, the social-economic status of the reported roles,and the sex of the reported roles, the author concludes that "structural imbalance" alsoexists in the media contents. Based on the above, the author argues that our country has the properties of a "media IIsociety", whereas some obvious imbalances can be found in the mass communicationprocess. To understand this point, all research should be placed under the macro settingsof social system.