A Study On The Relationship Between Social Images Of Journalists And The Use Of New Media

The purpose of this study is to probe into the social image of journalists in three groups (i.e. journalists, journalism students, and the general public), and the correlations between the image and the use of new media. This research adopts a method of combining questionnaire survey and depth interview, and the former is used to get phenomenon while the later explains it. We called in689effective questionnaires from Shanghai and Shandong province. Data analysis tools include: descriptive statistics, item analysis, factor analysis, one-way ANOVA, independent-samples t test, correlation analysis and linear regression analysis. The study results are as follows:Journalists’ image is divided into four aspects in our research:professional quality, ethics of profession, function&roles, and life style. Our research shows that the assessments of three groups on journalists’image differ not at all. Although journalists have a good image in public, three groups are different in some factors of their social image. The assessment of journalists on their image is generally higher than the general public, especially on ethics of profession.There are some differences on ingredients of journalists’ image between three groups. Overall, of all different demographic variables, journalists’ evaluations on their image are the highest, while the general public’s evaluation the lowest. In the same group, there are also some differences on ingredients of image. Furthermore, correlations between demographic variables (gender, age, place of residence, education level and income) and the evaluations on journalists which hold by three groups are obviously strong.Correlations between the social image of journalists and the use of new media in three groups are different. For the general public, the correlations are not strong, while the correlations are relatively strong for journalists and journalism students. For journalists, what significant predictors for evaluation about the social image of journalists are time period and purposes of the use of new media. While for journalism students, significant predictors are basic facts (dependence on new media) and purpose of the use of new media.