The Construction Of Public Figures’ Images From The Cover Of "Southern People Weekly"

Based on the case analysis of the cover figures from "Southern People Weekly"—the first of Mainland China’s news journal about characters, this paper aims to explore in the present period of social transformation, news journals as the representative of the construction of the mass media on public figures. This paper focuses on four problems, that is, what kind of persons are selected to serve as cover figures by the "Southern People Weekly"; how they constructed them; they constructed what kind of image; as well as the question of why the news media shape this kind of public images. By analyzing the content of the texts from134journals of cover figures, it has been found that those public figures are proactive, innovative, vigorous and concerned about the social reality. News producers passed to the contemporary society some sort of "positive energy" by shaping these cover figures. In the diversity of today, these public figures as if the social tide of beach-goers, they caused in a particular field or a community-wide concern, and generates a certain amount of social impact.