Study On The Media Credibility In The Perspective Of Media Ecology

For the mass media, the credibility of the medium is of great significance. It is not only the core elements of the media to remain active and competitive under the conditions of market economy, but also as a social instrument to achieve the ultimate goal of their social value. In our country, moreover, due to the mass media’s official backing, media credibility has also been given special political significance. Mass medias regarded as a comprehensive reflection of the government’s ability to win the trust of people and to guide public opinion. In recent years, however, along with the explosive development of new media, traditional media, represented by the central and all levels of party committee authority newspapers, is constantly being challenged by new media. Those challenges has been extended from the competition for the market share、fight for the audience to competition of media credibility. These seemingly are just competitive market behaviors, which actually hidden behind a deep theoretical proposition. Based on media ecology’s point of view, changes of technology are not overlaid but ecological. A new technology is not just appending something to the old technology, but reforming everything. Therefore, new technologies often launch attacks on older technology on the aspects of time、attention、money、prestige and "world view". New media as a revolutionary medium who had collapsed media environment of traditional media is self-evident. The brunt performance of this collapse is that authority and credibility of traditional media have weakened by new media increasingly. The emergence of new media has changed the definition of authenticity of news、monopoly of news value and even the demarcation of press freedom. Once the traditional media cannot integrate itself into a more open and transparent media environment created by new media, it will eventually lose the trust and recognition from a large audience who immersed in internet age with more broad vision and open thinking.If be explained solely from the perspective of content, it is not sufficient to fully generalize the controversy about credibility aroused by new media. This is because from a macro perspective, the credibility of the media is to maintain the leading social media status established by traditional media, while the implications behind the dispute of credibility are ecological impacts brought by the changes of media status. Therefore, we should place the controversy under the background of the current changes in the media, and proceed from three aspects include symbol environment、perception environment and social environment through the perspective of media ecology, thus carrying out detailed and comprehensive study about the constituent elements of media credibility, which is the only way to give more scientific and objective answers.