| The telegraph is the first electronic communication technology in human history, and it improved the scope and speed of information dissemination by one order of magnitude. Since the late Qing Dynasty came to China, the telegraph was soon used to transmit news, but not widespread. When the Republic of China was established, the telegraph was generally applied to news dissemination, and produced a series of profound impacts on Chinese journalism. It greatly changed the ecology of Chinese news industry, enhanced the competitive consciousness of the newspaper offices and the journalists, changed the form of news reports, expedited the emergence of a modern news organization, the news agency, and promoted the modernization of Chinese journalism. Meanwhile, the telegraph also eliminated the barriers of time and space in the circulation of information, and the frequent and convenient information reception imperceptibly influenced people’s idea and action, thereby promoted the social change of modern China. This paper tries to piece together the fragments of historical data to restore the historical picture that the telegraph acted on the news industry and interacted with it during the early Republic of China from the perspective of communication technology and social change, and tries to explore how the telegraph affected the internal environment and external ecology of the press and ultimately influenced on the social change after it was widely used in news dissemination, with the purpose of seeking a historical footnote for the interpretation of the relationship between today’s new media and social development. Meanwhile, this study is also a case which confirmed the fact that communication technology has promoted information dissemination and social development.This paper mainly employs documentary method to explore the influence on the journalism in the early stage of the Republic of China and the promoting effect on the modern social change which produced by the telegraph, basing on history, journalism, communication, sociology and other interdisciplinary research methods and relying on the theory of communication technology and social change of Toronto Canada School:the logic thinking that the communication technology promotes the development of journalism, and thus promotes the social development. The preface of the paper summarizes the results of previous studies, explains the ideas and methods of this research, and reveals the significance of telegraph in communication studies. Main part of this paper consists of six chapters:the first chapter reviews the process that the telegraph being introduced into China and gradually developed. The second chapter discusses the role of the telegraph of improving the vocational skills of the journalists and expediting the emergence of the news agencies, etc. The third chapter analyzes how the telegraph changed the form of news reports. The fourth chapter describes the the control of government over the news wire and the struggle of the press. The fifth chapter expounds how the journalists enhanced their consciousness of professional community through the struggle for economic interests, focusing on the resistance of the press cable price. The sixth chapter elaborates how the press telegram changed people’s ideas and social life. The conclusion indicates the revelatory significance of news telegraph research for the present. |
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