Mass Media's Construction On "Modern Risk"——Taking Green Edition Of Southern Weekend As An Example

Depending on the development of modern technology, abandoning the interdiction of nature and tradition, our modern society is coming into an era of technology carnival rapidly. The update of technology are becoming more advanced and convenient, while accompanied by the increasing crisis such as leakage of nuclear, chemical pollution, ecological destruction, terrorism, etc. A large number of disasters, such as "9·11",SARS, the Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, indicated that we had come into the risk society defined by Ulrich Beck. The researches about risk issue have been the disputed topic in modern society.Nowadays, developed countries have thought back to this modern civilization, communication media including news media has brought consciousness of risk into reports, which are related with environment and health. Ulrich Beck believed that risk was not only existence but also a construct, which was not only produced in the application of technologies but also manufactured in the process of significance given. As a principal part of risk communication, mass media plays an vital role in construction of risk and public cognizance of risk. In our country, research on risk problems has grown up in recent years and is focusing on communicative tactics. From the perspective of construction, there are a few researches which investigative the risk construction of media.In this thesis, we took the methods of content analysis and text analysis, and took green edition of Southern Weekend as an example. Based on Ulrich Beck's Risk Society theory, we analyzed the roles of green edition of Southern Weekend in media construction features of modern risk. After those, in order to investigative the roles of mass media in the emergence of modern risk, and the grain and loss in the construction of modern risk, we abstracted the roles and functions of media in the modern society circumstance. Through these studies, we can comprehend the role our media in modern risk cognition, and also can supply a valuable perspective to the risk reports of those media.