The Image Of The City In The Cover Of The New Weekly (2004-2013)

New Weekly, which was founded in1996in Guangzhou, is an urban magazine dedicating in exploring and presenting urban life. It is well known for producing new concepts and creating topics, and it is highly valued among magazines in China. It should be noted that its urban cover dossiers present the urban images of modern China and the image qualities of modern citizens from different dimensions and perspectives.After generally reviewing the core values and spirits of New Weekly, and wholly analyzing the characters of the magazine and the styles of its cover stories, this thesis focuses on the city topics from cover stories of New Weekly in recent ten years (2004-2013), analyzing characteristics and performance of Chinese cities in the context of New Weekly, and discussing New Weekly’s philosophy and attitudes in selecting and narrating city topics. Also, the thesis attempts to explore some problems in the thematic planning of New Weekly, and corresponding improvement measures would be proposed.This thesis has revealed the three dimensions that New Weekly has utilized in terms of presenting the city images by referencing to Pseudo-environment Theory, Anti-Elitism Theory and Cultivation Analysis Theory. The three dimensions are:firstly, reflecting the image medium of city images, and then criticizing the realities, and thirdly, influencing readers by initiating the images of constructing idea cities. At the same time, this thesis analyzes what New Weekly has done to present the Chinese city images in detail from four perspectives which are economic, environmental, cultural and urban ones, through several cases. However, the New Weekly has certain misunderstandings and misinterpretations of presentations of city images owing to its internal critical attitude towards urban modernism, which, recognized as ambivalent, should be severely regarded and tackled.At last, from a view of news practice, the thesis emphasizes the general problems exist in thematic planning, and these problems also present as generalized issues covering the whole magazine. Meanwhile, corresponding measures of improvement have been proposed as an attempt.The spiritual core of New Weekly is’city’, and its essential presentations are cities as well. To some extent,’City’is the basis and soul of New Weekly which is trying to express its love and influences on cities. Admittedly, New Weekly efforts to widespread its ideas of city, and attempts to influence cities and the construction of’resort of urban life’, yet it is expected to make more effort to approach its goals due to planned, perspective and real-life factors.