Research On Reports Covering Social Conflicts

As a key concept cited mainly by conflict functionalism school, social conflict is either a cause of keeping balance and making peace of society or an element of changing and reforming of society. By reviewing the concept, we argue that any harmonious society will be with both stability and controversy. In the contemporary society of China, the workers and farmers have been more and more marginalized and disadvantaged due to the unreasonable institutional format. They are lack of public channel for expressing opinion and protecting their interests and as a result more and more social conflict events promoted by them. Sociologists warned that the power of the social turbulent and conflict explore would be gradually heaping up if the disadvantaged interests demand cannot be paid enough attention and be met as soon as possible and have no proper medium to communicate. The aim of the dissertation will discuss how the power affects varied expression and illustration of interests by observing how the social conflicts are exposed in general news reports.In the west of China, the massive contradiction is getting intensive and sharp. For instance, the relative benefit of industry is poor because of its irrational structure. The problems of " farmers, countryside and agriculture" are much more complicated. The gap of income between dweller in city and countryside is becoming bigger and bigger. The ecology and environment are destroyed by looting resources. The situation is not benefit for developing of the society, especially is not benefit for transition to modern society from underdeveloped condition in west of China. The dissertation will observe and study two national wide newspapers <People’s Daily> and <Southern Weekend>, three provincial party controlled newspapers <Guizhou Daily>,<Yunnan Daily>,<Gansu Daily>, and three city newspapers <Lanzhou Morning>,<Guizhou Metropolitan>,<Spring City Evening> with the way of "framework analysis". Based on content analysis. we’ll concern about the sub-ideology reflected by the newspaper reports which covered three collective conflict events happened in Guizhou, Yunnan and Gansu in2008.After the media’s function from the perspective of politics, sociology, journalism and communication, it will be discussed that the interaction between governments and media, the important role that media play in conveying interests request, the promotion of guiding ability of public opinion.The dissertation analyzes the problems in news reports on social conflicts from various aspects of agenda setting, source choice, image showing and media standing. At last, the writer puts forward coping strategies covering the transition of media’s role, the construction of communication mechanism, and building better media ecology.