Journalism And Consumption

Nowadays, a list of new changes have taken place in Chinese media, such as the recreation of news, the existence crisis of media, the guerdon news, false news, as well as the homogeneity and vulgarization of news, etc. Obviously, Chinese media are facing such a complex context: China's speedy entry into the global system, the internet helping spread knowledge beyond borders with great speed, the hi-tech media becoming the popular commodities, the means and forms of information promulgation turning to the picturization typified by TV. All above shows that today's media conducts are not simply of media themselves. They have become a complex system of social information communications that occur in the warm work of different cross-cultural power capital. On the other hand, China's changed greatly since 1992: from the system of social course to the media regulation mechanism, from elite culture to the mass discourse, from the government to the civil society. News steps from discourse hegemony to the mass discourse, from the seriousness to the entertainment and vulgarization. The author holds that all this attributes to the increasing prosperity of social consumption since the establishment of the market economy. The nature of journalism is severely affected by the complex consumption context: on one hand, the traditional values of journalism are shattered, news turning from the news report to the overall reflection of the daily life. News is entertainment and needs scheming. On the other hand, the major form of news turns from words to pictures, and the structure turns from the headstand pyramid to the story writing. Obviously, comes a new news promulgation era.Viewing the history of China's journalism studies, one can see that the journalism studies and the application of their paradigm are closely connected with the Chinese overall historical course. Thus, Chinese journalism studies have undergone three dominating paradigms since the founding of PRC: revolution, modernity and nation-country. All these paradigms have contributed to the journalism studies and to the construction and development of the journalism theory. The paradigms have produced two achievements: One is to retrospect and interpret the traditional propositions of journalism theory with the method of historical analysis, and to reconstruct the historical context that gives birth to the traditional propositions. The other is to hackle and reconstruct the basic concepts of traditional journalism with the relevant theoretical resources of contemporary west. These achievements accurately sums up the historical route of Chinese journalism, and represents the peculiarity and research value of Chinese journalism. But the author holds that the study of the relationship between journalism and consumption does not simply belong to journalism theory. News, as a most intuitionistic social text, is a reflection of social changes. Only when news is put in the context of social changes, and is studied by means of interdisciplinary theoretical resources, can one disclose its nature and the justification of its existence. Therefore, this dissertation uses Boulder's paradigm of "news field" for reference, and studies the various power factors and their interactions, as well as the results of the interactions by means of document hackling and comprehensive analysis. Beginning with the analysis of the media's new historical context and its impact on the news promulgation, and hackling the embodied characteristics of consumption, the author explores the close relationship between journalism and consumption. And then the author further studies the relationship and the theoretical justification. On the basis above, the author explores the party property and commerciality in China's mainstream discourse construction, and the construction of the relationship between elite discourse and civilian discourse, central discourse and marginal discourse, etc. Preface tells the author's problem consciousness and research method, and explains the resource and value of the research.Introduction hackles the prophase achievements and the arguments about the commerciality of news, and then the author reconsiders the topic. Reflecting the deficiencies of the current media criticism paradigm, the author raises a new media research paradigm.Chapter one surveys the consumption context of Chinese media, explores how journalism got impact from globalism, digitization and new media. The contents also cover the new system of journalism constructed by Chinese social changes, and the impact imposed by western consumption culture and Chinese new media environment. The impact made journalism inevitably move forward to consumption.Chapter two introduces some typical news examples of commerciality, trying to prove that Chinese journalism has begun to be characterized by commerciality.Chapter three and four try to interpret the consumption's positive and negative influence on journalism. The negative impacts hurt the existence of journalism, and impede the social advancement. Treating the positive and negative impacts rationally can help solve the problems arising in news consumptions.Chapter five furthers the relationships between journalism and consumption with different theories, trying to gain the theoretical basis and legitimacy, and laying a solid foundation for the construction of the mainstream journalism discourse in Chinese contexts.Chapter six begins with the relationship between the news' commerciality, party property and publicity, pointing out that the key problem of Chinese journalism development is the opposition and clashes of the three characteristics. Having probed the historical changes and the interrelationships of the three, the author puts forward an important tactics in constructing journalism discourses in the consumption context. The tactics is to improve the occasion to combine journalism and consumption, commerciality and party property, and mainstream discourse and consumption discourse. The use of news that people love to see and hear, and the combination of the three characteristics will help shape the journalism discourse centering round publicity in consumption era, and comply with the social development.