News Entertainment Through The Vision Of Political Economy Of Communication

In the past few years, news entertainment has become a favored pattern of mass media all over the world: the proportion of sensational news stories has increased, with a shift toward crime, scandal, violence, disaster, sport, celebrity coverage and entertainment, and away from public policy of political, economic, and foreign affairs. Overall, news stories are employing a more featurized and people-oriented stories and events. Therefore, this study attempts to unveil the economy rationale behind the pervasiveness of news entertainment and applies a content analysis to examine its impact on the public interest.In the first chapter, it firstly systematically examines the definition and historical root of news entertainment. Then this study attempts to analyze three well-known events to uncover the characteristics of this phenomenon; In the second chapter, after introducing the main viewpoints of political economy of communication on media commodification, namely, content commodification, audience commodification and labor commodification, this study applies a market-driven journalism model and finds that competition for audience and advertising has made news merge with entertainment from the theoretical aspect. Furthermore, this study conducts a content analysis of media commodification phenomenon in various areas of mass media in detail from the practical aspect. Based on the systematic analysis above, this study finally proposes that media commodification is the major factor influencing the setting of news agendas and the major reason for the emergence of news entertainment; in the last chapter, this study summarizes the negative impact which news entertainment brings on public interest. It is known that media has been characterized by its social role as "doorkeeper", so it should provide a public service and uncover public debates for the audience. However, shifting news standard to incorporate entertainment programming strategies has raised numerous criticisms that news story sensationalism is intervening with news professionalism.