How Communication Affect The City Image Of Left-behind Children

Recently, the problem of the left-behind children becomes a hot issue. A lot of advices were proposed on this issue. For most left-behind children living in the remote villages in china, television is very important in their lives as a result of the missing of parents. This thesis focuses on the left-behind children in yanzihe in Anhui Province, trying to discover the affect of TV on the left-behind children, by questionnaire and field research. We found that to most left-behind children, TV opened a door for them to uncover the city, which is quite different from their living place.The left-behind children have three ways to get the information about the city: TV、interpersonal communication and personal experience. The city image in TV is diversified and is the first image in their mind. There are skyscrapers in TV. But there also is the issue of environmental pollution in TV. There are a variety of people in TV, but they pay more attention on the urban residents who look down the rural residents. From their parents and relatives, the children heard that the hardware facilities in the city are advanced, but the peasants working in the city are painful and they may be despised by the urban residents. The information from their personal experience is quite match with the news what they heard. The city image in the left-behind children’s mind is just like this:the city is much more advanced than the countryside. There are tall buildings everywhere in city; the urban residents live a more comfortable life, there are good people and bad people in the city At the same time, but some people in the city may look down the people from the countryside, they hate this sort of people. Some children may amplify their aversion----hating all the urban residents.No matter looking forward to the life of the urban residents or hating the discrimination from the urban residents, most children in yanzihe are expecting to live in the city in their future. From reality, their identity is a rural resident; but from emotion, they are hoping to be an urban resident in the future. Unfortunately, the chances for their dreams to come ture are rare because of the dualistic social structure in urban and rural areas in China. Most of them will follow their parents---becoming a rural worker. On the one hand they can’t accept their identity of rural residents, on the other hand they find they can’t get the identity of urban residents. This is not only the left-behind children’s problem. It exists on all the children in the remote countryside. Besides, the problem will grow more and more serious as the time goes by.