A Narrative Analysis On Television Livelihood And Consumption News In Taiwan

Taiwan television media are affluent in the ways of news production, which could be better reflected by their people's livelihood and consumption news production. Television media in mainland China follow it a lot, and mainland television scholars study it a lot too. But those imitation and research are more in accord with people's impression rather than base on quantitative investigation. In the free communication and interaction of different cultures and views, people will consciously compare, distinguish, cogitate and select, which can lead those different cultures and views to move forward. Journalism, as an industry of dealing with information, also needs communication and learning among different media to promote its development. Base on rich video material of news program offered by Taiwan television media, this thesis will do narrative analysis on people's livelihood and consumption news in Taiwan supported by quantitative investigation and qualitative research. Through the study of Taiwan TV news program, this thesis aims at improving news production of mainland TV news media. People's livelihood and consumption news is a type of TV news that supplies information of clothing, diet, housing, journey, leisure and relevant living and consumption activities to people to inform and relax them. This kind of news is obviously distinguished from social news in Taiwan which is more of cold content like violent and pornography, and it is also obviously distinguished from political and economic news which is more of vital and major issues.There are five angles of narrative analysis when confronted with topic, namely, theme of narration, way of narration, value of narration, programming of narration and effect of narration. In detail, there are nearly 30 statistic items as follows:1. Under the frame of theme of narration, the statistic items include news topic, subject of coverage, news attribute, etc.; 2. Under the frame of way of narration, the statistic items include coverage form, shooting and sound (including shooting expression, shooting scale, actual sound and journalist under camera), breakthrough point of news (including news emphasis and occurrence time), editing (including scene of anchor under camera, bold headlines and symbol, screen segregation, static/motional schematic diagram and background music), etc.; 3. Under the frame of value of narration, the statistic items include the value of importance and conspicuousness, timeliness and suitability, event and place proximity, conflict and opposition, amusement and novelty, politics and commerce; 4. Under the frame of programming of narration, the statistic items include orderly programming and aggregation programming; 5. Under the frame of effect of narration, the statistic items include the difference of audience rating caused by different themes of narration, ways of narration, values of narration and programming of narration.After the analysis of relevant results with the background of the social and media condition in Taiwan, this thesis is also trying to go much deeper:1. The reflection, history, cause and solution of the chaos of Taiwan television news production; 2. The disadvantages and misgivings of quantitative investigation, including over focus on the quantitative method, western theory, fact and current communication system; 3. The rationality of TV as a type of popular culture; 4. People's livelihood and consumption news under mass culture perspective; 5. People's livelihood and consumption news as an effort of ideology. The deficiency of the study is also presented in the last part of the article.The innovations in the dissertation as bellow:1. The thesis fills up the deficiency of relevant study in mainland China; 2. Because of the practical and academic exchange experience in Taiwan, the author has a good command of many precious, systematic and first-hand materials of which the academic circle in mainland lack; 3. With the reference to the correlation study in Taiwan, the quantitative and statistic frame of narrative analysis in this thesis has been innovated; 4. The author has the internship experience both in News Department of Taiwan Television Enterprise and Department of News Network(XINWEN LIANBO) of China Central Television, which is the concrete basis of doing academic research; 5. The purpose of the thesis is not only confined to the facade, but also aims at the deeper thinking and study of the relationship between essence and regulation, politics and economy, culture and society. That deeper perspective is what this thesis mostly focuses on.