| In early 2009, the Minister of Industry and Information Technology of People's Republic of China issued the first three 3G (3rd generation) licenses, which was of great significance. Many people believe that it marks that China formally enters the 3G era, during which the mobile phone media is to be one of the most important media types. In 2010 April 19th, revealed from the result of the seventh National Reading Survey, mobile phone newspaper had become the most popular one among all of the mobile phone reading manners.Since the 3G licenses were issued, China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom speeded up their constructions of the 3G networks. Although the construction of 3G networks is fast, which is good news for mobile phone newspaper, the contents and forms of mobile phone newspaper still remain at stage of the 2G era, lagging behind the construction of the 3G networks to a great extent. The innovation and contribution of my study lies in that it makes an effective connection of the contents of mobile phone newspaper production and user demands for mobile phone newspaper. My study starts from users'personal reading experiences, and then through an empirical research, it explores which kinds of contents and forms of mobile phone newspaper tend to meet users'"taste". Based on the findings from the empirical research, my study is to propose some practical implications for the innovative strategies of the mobile phone newspaper industry.This general structure of my study is as follows:First, from a macroscopic level, my study reviews the development of the mobile phone newspaper industry in China during the past six years. Then, my study will turn into the review of the development of the contents and forms of mobile phone newspaper with a microscopic lens. After completing the above two tasks, my study will apply the content analysis method to probe into three of the most popular local mobile phone newspapers in China, namely, Guangzhou Daily Mobile Phone Newspaper, Hangzhou Mobile Phone Newspaper, and Nanjing Mobile Phone Newspaper as three cases. My study has kept a long-term track on these three cases, and has collected 42 pieces of mobile phone news in total for one year. By virtue of a tracking study and comparative analysis for the above three mobile phone newspapers, my study summarizes the features for a best-selling mobile phone newspaper: 1) focusing on local news, 2) paying close attention to practical information, 3) diversifying forms of mobile phone news, 4) making a good arrangement of headline news and news introduction 5) having fascinating interactive topics, 6) refining important points and interpreting news with in-depth analysis.According to the results of my previous content analysis, my study designs questionnaire to conduct empirical research subsequently. The sample size in this survey is 200. Each questionnaire is sent by email to mobile phone newspaper subscribers. Facilitated by the report released by the China Internet network information center (CNNIC) in 2009, namely, the Research on Chinese Mobile Phone Media, my study precisely analyzes the characteristics of mobile phone newspaper users'age, gender, education background, and occupation, etc.The 200 samples are chosen from five different cities in China, which are Beijing, Shanghai, Ningbo, Xiamen and Chengdu. The rationale for choosing these five cities is two-folded. First, mobile phone users are quite concealed, and researchers cannot clearly position them. Second, these five cities have relatively mature mobile phone newspaper industry and high subscription rate of mobile phone news. Thus, it is relatively not difficult for me to collect adequate samples. Therefore, my study chose the above five cities.Snowball method is applied in the empirical part of my study. In the beginning stage, by using my own personal networks in these five cities (i.e. Beijing, Shanghai, Ningbo, Xiamen and Chengdu), I distributed the questionnaires to my friends and relatives who are mobile phone newspaper subscribers. In the following stage, I commissioned the first layer of respondents to distribute the questionnaires to their parents, children, friends and colleagues who are mobile phone newspaper subscribers as well. I collected quantitative data through the above two stages.According to the statistical analysis of the questionnaires, I finds out that the mobile phone newspaper subscribers have five common characteristics: 1) preferring headline news to complete news, 2) local news is necessary but not the most important content of mobile phone news, 3) most attracted by creative points of views, 4) favoring fewer buttons and faster internet speed, and 5) favoring news photos the most, and dislike video news the worst.There are some limitations in the empirical part of my study. The mobile phone newspaper subscribers are disperse and concealed. Without sufficient human, material and financial resources, it is impossible for a single researcher to obtain comprehensive nationwide data from operators (e.g. China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom). Also, it is impossible to make sure the positions of mobile phone newspaper subscribers without the national data. Furthermore, it is also impossible for my study to apply the random sampling method because it is too time-consuming for a master thesis. For these practical reasons, my study only adopts convenient sampling with the considerations of convenience and feasibility. 200 samples, though it is not large enough to reflect the overall and accurate scenario of mobile phone newspaper in China, at least from a side, it is a true reflection of some rules and characteristics of a best-selling mobile phone news paper.Combining the previous studies done by other scholars and my own empirical research, I put forward six innovation strategy for the policy-makers and practitioners in mobile phone newspaper industry in China: 1) localizing the headline news, 2) adding more photograph news, and improving their qualities, 3) replacing complete news with headline news, 4) providing interactive topics of mobile news, 5) user friendly interface, and 6) attaching useful mobile phone coupons. Last but not least, my study also suggests mobile phone newspaper industry utilize external forces, such as fostering college newspaper content production team and using rational marketing strategies to make long-term achievements. |
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