A Research On The Application Of Community Media With China Urbanization In Progress

A surging global trend of rapid urbanization has emerged since the1970s. Under this context, this thesis focuses on the reconstruction of community spirit in the process of urbanization in China from the perspective of Communication. The purpose of this study is to discuss how to create an urban community communication channel with the help of media, and thus restore the community spirit and arouse the sense of belonging among urban dwellers.This research includes three parts principally. The first part enumerated the phenomena and problems, including of definitions of correlative concepts, descriptions of important relationships, investigations into the application of community media with China urbanization in progress, and problems found in the survey. The second part analyzed the reason of above problems, pointing out the decisive and influence factors of the application of community media. The third part brought forward a general solving strategy on the above problems, which was summarized as "Community Media Platform".This study suggests the establishment of a "Community Media Platform". The proposal of this concept was based on an investigation into the application of community media in the process of urbanization in China. The subjects of the investigation are four types of communities, which are in quasi-urban areas, industrialized rural areas, formerly state-owned enterprises and living complexes in metropolitan cities. A large-scale field study was conducted in four cities in Guangdong province, with a mixed methods approach combining qualitative and quantitative analysis. The findings indicate that the distribution of media in communities is problem-laden with five issues, namely, the communicators, the content, the medium, the audience and the communication effect. The root cause of these problems can be traced back to certain aspects of the current social system, yet drawbacks in financial investment, resource utilization, citizen consciousness and media technology might also cast impact on community communication.The essence of "Community Media Platform" is to combine and utilize the various types of community communication mediums, so an integrated information communication unity will be created. In this way, a innovated type of service will be provided to the community inhabitants and other related social organizations, satisfying their increasing demands for the exchange of information in the process of urbanization. There are five distinctive features of this Platform. First, the communication scope is within the community. Second, the targets of this service are the community inhabitants. Third, the end results are bidirectional or multi-dimensional communications. Fourth, various mediums serve as the assistance of the construction of media integrity and combination. At last, digital and network technologies act as the core technical support to this platform.Evidently, the growth of a society in the process of urbanization requires the construction of such a Community Media Platform. It is also an urgent requirement to the basic municipal management system of a city. A well-established Community Media Platform will help to make communities an integrated entity. It will also usher new lights on the innovation of media professions. Moreover, this platform will facilitate the distribution and preserving of city culture, as well as forge the connection between virtual and real-life communities in the same city. Therefore, the proposal and establishment of Community Media Platform bears theoretical significance and practical values. Findings from the investigation also prove the feasibility of constructing such platforms in most of the cities in China.Finally, this study performs a preliminary research on the operating system of urban Community Media Platform. This phase of research involves its function, target user requirement, evaluation system, structure, operating procedures, stages and models. Since digital and network media channels serve as the core infrastructure of this platform, the construction of these channels should be the key steps in this Platform research. Therefore, this study also conducts a detailed analysis on the orientation, design, establishment, realization and extension of these technological build-ups.