Public Image Representation In The Urban Media, As The Threshold

The modern citizen class began to from after the Opium War and stepped onto the modern way in Shanghai and other coastal cities. Nowadays, impacted by the wave of urbanization, the citizen class has expanded in profundity and width so that the media has great enthusiasm to report them. But does the media deviate from truth when represent the citizen class? What kind of deviation exists between media construction and social truth? What are the reasons?The thesis studies the representation of citizen's media image. The author, borrowing Semiology theory and adopting content analysis, analyses and study the report about citizen class on "Xian News" page in Huashang Newspaper. The study shows that the media give a deviated representation of citizen class, and the reports about new and old citizen class are different with each other. Also the representation of citizen's basic information deviates from the truth because of the media's own ideas and benefit. Then, the author analyses in general the deviation of representation lies in the following four aspects: the fall of signified and signifier, the use of metonymy and metaphor in news, power relationship behind news and media's creation of myth—always serve people.The article points out that in order to solve the unfair situation, government, citizen and media should make efforts to improve the quality of report about citizen. The government should take effective measures to develop civilized citizens with good qualities, which is fundamental point; the citizen class should improve their own media literacy, which is one of the necessary qualities that modern people have for survival and development; the media's social responsibility should be more distinct and the media's value should be people oriented to set various issues for the public. As for the transmission, the self-awareness of representing citizen's image must be set in order to realize effective signifier and true signified. The citizen's situation should be truly reflected. Only in this way can improve the news report about citizen class and represent impersonal and fair citizen's image.