Controversial Events' Report Frame And The Mechanism Of Frame Interaction Under Network Environment

The concept of frame originally came from the research fields of cognitive psychology and anthropology. By then, the integrated theory of frame has absorbed several ranges of theories, including sociology, economy, linguistics, social movement research, and so on. Goffman took frame as a set of disciplines and structures to transfer personal social experience into subjective cognition. The reporting frame is a specific frame of media cognition system by the process of selecting, composition, addressing of information, which can finally approach information receivers. By the ongoing step of theoretical research and communication practice, the concept of frame has come in to a potential communication idea and mechanism. My research is based on the frame theory and focuses on analyzing the mechanism of controversial events by using document research, content analysis, qualitative research and empirical study.This dissertation took the report frame of the "Xia Junfeng Event " by PhoenixNet, while selecting the reporting samples from the day of PRC s highest court's final approving of xiajunfeng's death sentence (25/9/2013) to31/12/2013. By analyzing report sample, this dissertation strived to overview the mechanism of controversial events'report frame through presenting reporting frame's issues and the construction mechanism of report frame. The overall structure of this dissertation is composed by five parts.Part one is introduction. The main purpose of this chapter is to clarify this dissertation's topic background, and its objective and significance, and then presented the frame analysis'theoretical ongoing process of domestic and foreign research, and its feature and trend, and puts forward research methods and innovative point of views. Frame construction is a significant thought or carrier to build media reality, by which news production is made, and news report's boundary is defined. The frame's meaning is related to specific ideology with social class feature and value deviation to serve certain interest group. Nowadays, China is on the process of deepen reforming with institutional and social transition, which comes by a lot of contradiction. Frame analysis can be used in many fields of social life and the frame research of controversial events is an appropriate point to survey the changes of China.Part two is empirical analysis of controversial events'report frame. By analyzing sample's main topic, information sources and values, the core issues of media report and their internal connection is specified. There are five kinds of report frame in sample with conflict, humanity, responsibility attribution, morality and fact. Fact frame build news context. Conflict frame build the situation of controversial issues. Humanity, responsibility attribution, morality are reporting tactics. By the interior logical relationship of those kinds of frame is composed by a comprehensive frame level. The construction of frame is not by random constitution, but by the character of news event, social attention and social mental appeal with steps of selection, stressing, salience to build pseudo-environment. Frame issues could transfer with development of news event, which is the result of the public's participation and the interaction between media and audience and can affect the result of event to certain extent.Part three is the mechanism of controversial event report frame from three angles of social environment, media attribution, content restrict. News production is such a process of institutionalization and systematism as a product of recombination action by group, institution, regime, and culture. In the epic of Internet, the public field feature of controversial event is represented by the discourse encounter of audience, media, government, while the public takes an increasingly active in discussing controversial issues and expressing appeal.Part four is the frame interaction of media and audience. On the basis of analysis of audience frame's connotation, mechanism, and the way of information interpretation, this chapter tries to make empirical analysis of frame interaction's discipline and its meaning to communication. The frame interaction research is the extension of frame theory based on audience aspect. By frame interaction, the mechanism of democratic dialogue is built, which can put the chance of audience expression and governmental supervision. Frame interaction is an important mechanism of collecting and presenting public opinion, which is a significant development and extension of frame theory in internet era. Controversial event report frame should be built on democratic communication paradigm between media and audience. The frame's meaning and value should be realized through frame interaction.The last part is summary. There are three conclusions in this dissertation.1. The frame issue is the highest level of controversial event report frame, which decides frame's basic feature, paradigm and value deviation. Issues are those topics abstracted from information that can be discussed by public and can make social effect. By defining core issue, humanity frame, responsibility attribution frame, morality frame, fact frame, conflict frame can be defined, and also the report boundary.2. Multi-interaction is driven mechanism of controversial event report frame. Internet has become the dominant carrier to discuss public issues and public appeal especially to controversial events. Controversial event report frame would inspire potential complicated social temper with positive or negative steak, which can lead public opinion to two different directions. Controversial event report frame's main function is to magnify the effect of public platform and main value to the highest level.3. The audience frame would affect media report frame to certain extent, while cannot decide the final result of controversial events.The main innovative points of the dissertation are including three parts.1. The research angle is relatively new. The research is around the frame interaction between media and audience with the interactive feature of internet to straighten out the report mechanism of controversial events, which is a kind of breakthrough by contrast to previous research focused on media.2. The research of frame interaction. It contrives to investigate the mechanism of frame interaction in the case of the conflicting feature of controversial events. The research angles are not only on information sender, including media and governments but also audience information recognition. And it tries to find out the discipline behind frame interaction.3. New opinions. Controversial events are those media cultural phenomena that represent pluralism of ideological clash in the process of social transference of China. Frame interaction in the essential part of controversial events frame. It also made some new conclusions about the mechanism of controversial events under Internet environment.