Discourse Production Of Heath Reform On The Media

Against a symbolic and political background, The New Health Reform discourse is produced through a chain of action starting with government-led policy documentation, then to social practice carried out by actors and finally to the discourse product presented by media. Upon the issues of "national health image" and "health discourse manufactured through people’s everyday life", media are very cautious in choosing their strategy such as deciding whether to "report to not" and "what to report". Based on the social practice of media’s health reform discourse, this paper tries to investigate the mechanism and interaction between power and ideology underneath the media presentation.First, this paper analyzes the production routine of New Health Reform discourse. Restricted by social development and its own role, TV news media, located in the field of health discourse, attempts to strike a balance as they operate under three types of identities, official media, commercial media and public media. By utilizing the strategy of selecting the news source, discourse entity and factual documentation, producers of New Health Reform discourse accomplishes the task of settlement of the agenda. In order to better understand the dynamic influence imposed on discourse production both from inside and outside the media organization, this paper proposes the analytical concept of media discourse space of social issue and studies the pattern of power and ideology’s involvement in the production through discourse space and control/penetration of "sensitive sphere". Practice such as treading the boundaries of the discourse space itself becomes power of game. Ideology exerts its dominance in prohibiting certain issue entering the social agenda; penetration of discourse space is the result of official discourse’s endorsement and news practitioners’pursuit of professionalism.By content analyzing CCTV’s three years coverage of New Health Reform, it becomes apparent that constant tension is prevalent among its text. TV coverage creates a sense of antagonism and segregation when presenting the implementation and assessment of New Health Reform and its actualization in everyday life. Discursive confrontation could be identified in the antagonistic narrative frame and identity differentiation of doctor and patient when participating the discourse production. Because of the path dependency, mass media’s reliance on news source and media frame created the scenario of discourse confrontation in their routine production. As for TV news production mechanism, discourse entity is normally decided by news source and they then set the tone and news frame of the coverage. TV news manufacturers try to push the boundaries of discourse space within certain tolerance scale and they constitute the innovation of discursive practice. Media discourse and official discourse’s accidental congruence in specific case bears a positive connotation as it reveals the doctor-patient contentious relationship and encourages debate about the health system. Through these activities, media return to the role of social conduit. Though the turn of discourse pattern is sporadic, the significant of each specific case and their accumulation create a breeding ground for the revolutionary change of discourse production mechanism that is yet to come.Among numerous cases of local health reform, the experiment carried out in Shenmu County of Shanxi Province exerts itself as a unique sample in implementing universal health care. However, public opinion about this experiment underwent a tumultuous fluctuation after media’s involvement. From initial media exposure to suspicion to affirmation and then to silence, operation of power system embedded in discourse oroduction is revealed in verv phase. This paper singles out the Shenmu exneriment as me target or investigation ana, by reading meaia text ana neia interview, tries to crystallize the construction and deconstruction of universal health care discourse and the game played between media production and powerful entity during the process.