An Empirical Study On The Media Dependence Of College Students In Beijing Under The New Media Environment

The main producing pattern and communicating pattern of media has changed a lot in new media age. It’s the same with the relationship between media and audience. The college students can be considered as special audience due to their high level of knowledge and high degree of acceptance for new media. They have gradually become the leader of new media users. Based on the above background, the paper analyzes the performance, characteristics and influencing factors of Beijing college students’media dependency in new media age. The paper aims to not only offer one meaningful perspective for the study of media-audience relationship, but also demonstrate the interactive performance between Beijing college students, media and the society in new media age.The paper mainly relies on the media dependency theory and the research methods of literature and questionnaires. Media dependency theory was proposed by Melvin DE fleur and BaoErJi Rocky in 1976, which described the relationship between media’s influence and media dependency.The first chapter introduces the significance and purpose of this study, the literature review, the paper’s framework and study methods. The second chapter introduces some relevant theories including media development history, relationship between human and media as well as new media. Media dependency theory is highlight in this part. The third chapter analyzes the performance and degree of college students’ media dependency in new media age based on the questionnaire result. The fourth chapter then explores the cognitive, emotional and behavioral influence caused by the new media dependency. In addition, the fourth chapter also analyzes the relationship between media dependency degree and media influence in new media age. Lastly, the fifth chapter analyzes the influencing factors for media dependency from the perspective of media, individuals and society.It is concluded from the study that modern Beijing college students have formed the media using habit dominated by new media, which meet their comprehensive needs, directional needs and entertainment needs. Besides, some new characteristics come up concerning college students’media dependency for new media. The instrumental dependence and ritual dependence become more apparent. The paper also finds out that there are some relevance between new media dependency degree and new media influence on Beijing college students and there can be a various kinds of influencing factors.