The Media Image Of The Middle Class Under The Interactivity Between The Consumerism Culture And The Media

The reform and opening-up policy paved the way for the prosperity of Chineseeconomy. Middle class, an emerging social class, continually appeared in our daily life andplayed a main role in promoting social progress. However, considering itsbackground of the times, middle class still has not got a clear class boundary so far, whichmade class identification very difficult. This situation will cause the negative influence tothe development of middle class. Meanwhile, consumer magazines, emerging in thebackground of consumerism culture and taking the middle class as target audience, begantheir vigorous development in our country. Lifeweek is the typical one of them. This kindof magazine, as the text vector of consumer culture, constantlyinstills in readers symbolicmeaning of consuming behavior by creating the images of the middle class. It not onlyoffers the middle class a way to realizestatus identification, but also provides samples forour research about the images of middle class. Nevertheless, according to some classicaltheories, such as represent and pseudo-environment, there is some difference between themedia image of middle class created by consumer media and the real one, which couldinfluence the healthy development of the middle class.The background above leaves3meaningful questions. The first one, what is the imageof middle class in Lifeweek? The second one, is there any bias when Lifeweek try topresent the middle class? The last one, what is the reason for the bias and how to overcomeit?52issues of Lifeweek from2001to2013are selected for sample in this study.407middle class images and958advertisements are chosen from both of the news content andthe advertisement content. Based on statisticalanalysis about these samples,thispaper triesto explore media image of the middle classaffected by consumerism culture and summarizethe image features of the middle class in3aspects, basic image, social image andconsumer image. Consequently, with a comparison of the media image and the fact,the image is found against our traditional culture and social reality of the middle class.Afterwards, further analysis of the bias and corresponding advices are put forward, whichprovides reference for image creating. At last, there is also a discussion about the influenceand significance of constructing media image of middle class in this study.As the watcher of society, media should promote the sound development of middleclass by presenting its real image. Meanwhile, how to reduce the influence of consumerismculture will become a vital task in the research of middle class image represent in thefuture.