Political Mobilization Promoted By Typical Character Report In The People’s Daily

Party newspaper which is a special and important part of our whole politicalsystem has played a role of significant communication in each period of mobilizationactivities. Typical reports which are those about the representative stuff of social lifehave grown up during the Anti-Japanese War and gained a place in our history ofjournalism. Typical character report is one type of typical report which helps the mediato play the role of organization and mobilization including ideological education andaction mobilization. However, typical report has been used for more than70yearsduring which time media’s character and influence have been changing and sometypical characters have even been losing their influence. Learn-from-Lei Feng activitiesstarted in1963, when Party newspaper called for the people to learn from Comrade LeiFeng by the publication of Mao Zedong’s inscription.50years later, Lei Fengmovement set off another climax in2012. My study tries to figure out howLearn-from-Lei Feng movement which acts as an ongoing mass movement is organizedand presented by mass media and how the mobilization content and way have changedduring the past50years, so that we can summarize the universal law of politicalmobilization work in the way of typical character report and sum up some experienceand lessons.Most of the past researches have focused on image change and spirit framework ofLei Feng or on the data statistics and analysis of the reports about Lei Feng, but mystudy notices the political features of Lei Feng reports. Choosing the politicalmobilization as the starting point, my study selects reports from People’s Daily which isthe most authoritative party newspaper in China and focuses on how Lei Feng report ispresented in each aspects of the political mobilization. This study uses the method ofcontent analysis and discourse analysis to see the overall presentation of Lei Fengreports and the changes of mobilization objects, mobilization content, and mobilization mode during a long time period. Also, this study tries to find out the discourse featuresof media during the movement.