Research On "Red Flag Weekly" From The Perspective Of Media Function

Red Flag Weekly, as the fourth official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, was founded on March9,1931in Shanghai and was renamed from the Red Journal. Red Flag Weekly was initially as a weekly, which had changed to Red Flag as a semimonthly since the59th issue on August31,1933and the masthead was changed as Red Flag. And then it was published unceasingly when moving to the Central Soviet Area of Jiangxi Province at the59th issue. The final issue of Red Flag was on March1,1934, which was published a total of64issues from beginning to end, publishing13supplements during that period of time. Red Flag Weekly recorded the development and evolution of lines, principles and policies of Chinese Communist Party from1931to1934, and also recorded the interpretation and guidance of influential revolutionaries in history towards the party’s policies and work, leaving the real and valuable historical information. At present, however, the research about Red Flag Weekly is still relatively rare among the academic field, and the sole study is relatively scattered, which is neither systematic nor comprehensive. Therefore, it has high academic value on the Red Flag Weekly study.To begin with, this paper aims at analyzing the operational purpose and author groups of the Red Flag Weekly. This paper holds the idea that the operational purpose of the Red Flag Weekly is not only to guide the revolutionary masses and expand its influence of the party among the masses, but also to guide the party’s work in order to improve the party’s fighting and struggle to overthrow the imperialism and the Kuomintang. In addition, the paper also verifies the signatures of articles published on the Red Flag Weekly, and analyzes the authors of this newspaper from the perspectives of three aspects, that is, the author of speech, documental author and correspondent.Secondly, this thesis studies carefully all the articles on the Red Flag Weekly, focusing on the analysis and research of those articles that can pass information of the party, and coverage analysis of the international situation as well as reports towards Soviet propaganda from the content of this newspaper. Moreover, the issue about the Red Flag Weekly is discussed in the following, taking measures of camouflaging cover secretly in the White Terror in the1930s. In the64th issue of this newspaper, it appeared 16kinds of camouflage covers altogether. Through combining the analysis and interpretation of these16kinds of camouflage covers in detail with the censorship of Kuomintang, the paper explores the protective effect of the revolutionary advances of disguised covers in the publication under the sharp revolutionary situation.Based on the analysis of the content and the issue of the Red Flag Weekly, it concludes that the characteristic of this newspaper is on one hand to pay attention to the guiding role of the official newspaper and the strong calling, on the other hand, it also becomes a sharp tool of Communist class struggling during the process of running this newspaper. Besides, through the relatively complete and true records of the work of the Soviet Communist Party and the Kuomintang-controlled areas in the Red Flag Weekly, leaving a valuable historical information, which play an important role for later generations to do some researches on the history of the Communist Party and development of the journalism of Communist Party. The Red Flag Weekly has become the propaganda of Chinese Communist Party, which propagandizes policies, guidelines of the Communist Party by newspapers, as well as play a significant supporting part to the implementation of the policy of the Communist Party.Red Flag Weekly as the fourth official newspaper of China Central Committee of Communist Party, which reflects the Chinese society truly and the revolutionary situation in the1930s. And at the same time, the development of the Chinese revolution is carefully explored. Although it has the limitations of the times, the limitations of some understandings, as well as limitations of two ideas struggling in the published articles, it still reflects the zeal and consideration of communists towards the revolutionary. Last but not the least, it significantly holds the banner of democratic revolution, and the combination of the revolutionary ranks, as well as illuminates the direction of the revolution under the Kuomintang’s White Terror.