The Contemporary Medium Intellectual’s Cultural Practices

With the prevalence of today’s consumerism and the loss of ultimate concern, the documentary "A bite of China" has again awakened people’s callings for basic human values of faith, and also shown social responsibilities of criticizing the society and enlightening the public of the media intellectuals, thereby it has provided a successful example of cultural practices for the contemporary media intellectuals to reconstruct the Chinese cultural value system. According to Habermas’s theory of communicative action, the rationalization of the culture comes from the common norms of people in the "life-world" based on communicative rationality rather than the "systematically" indoctrination of cultural values for the purpose of instrumental rationality. This thesis is based on the theory of communicative action, attempts to explain the cultural practices of the background of "A bite of China" and further analyses the specific path of cultural practices as well as proposes the shortcomings and improvements methods for the media intellectual.Firstly, this paper offers a comprehensive explanation of the background status quo of "A bite of China" created by media intellectual. Under the instrumental rationality domination, the specific background of media intellectuals’ cultural practices expressed as:Integrated Chinese cultural value system and political system; the unformed contemporary Chinese public domination; the prevalence of mass culture and the loss of ultimate concern. These highlighted current situation caused the collapse of the contemporary Chinese value system and it has also become a social and cultural context for the practical activities of the contemporary intellectuals.Secondly, this paper uses content analysis and discourse analysis, based on communicative action theory to offer a specific analysis and interpretation for the cultural practices path of the "A bite of China" media intellectuals. The rebuilt of the cultural value of "A bite of China" has moved away from the "systematically" technical and instrumental domination to the public "life world". It tries to explore and construct norms of the content of people’s communicative action in daily life and among the interaction of people.Finally, this paper has made some proposals to improve cultural practices. First, we should strive to completely get rid of the political influence of the "system" on people’s living world, in which people can build into the heart of the cultural value system; Second, we should pay attention to people exchanges and dialogue presented only in people’s conversations in order to put forward the mutual recognition and understanding of the original value and the new norms.