A Case Study On Investigative Reporters’ Group Identity With The Perspective Of Collective Memory

At present, the internet is deeply reconstructing the sense of space and time for human beings, providing a platform for adjusting the public writing and power relationship. Social collective memory in the past produced by the elite is now gradually being diluted and dissipated. In the field of the news, investigative reporters, as the range pole for the industry practitioners, also faced with the challenge of diversifying memory production, virtualizing community interaction and utilitarian information dissemination, laying influence on their professional identity and generation inheritance. Eventually, excellent frontline investigative reporters are flowing; industry development is out of a virtuous circle, threatening to news authority and professional boundaries.This thesis got six samples of investigative reporters working in the department of In-depth Reports and Mobile Reports in Chutian Metropolis Daily, mainly adopted the in-depth interview method of the qualitative research, followed the grounded theory of encoding process towards data coding and inducing. The samples are selected by the method of snowball and internal recommendation.The core framework of this thesis is the interrelationships between collective memory and group identity, collective memory lays basis for the group identity and group identity helps to construct and maintain collective memory in turn, and then to analyze the group identity level among the investigative reporters from the perspective of collective memory, it tries to points out how the changing identity level influences on news professional boundaries, explore the possibility of its reasonable reconstruction as well.This study found that the construction of investigative reporters’ collective memory has the distinct characteristics, in addition to the general need for social interaction. First of all, the shape of collective memory for investigative reporters pays more attention to the mutual watch on the professional value beliefs; secondly, the reporter’s participation in major news events and the widespread dissemination of news works has given the characterization of collective memory more advantages. However, take the rapid tribal and virtualizing communication and complex intersection of social relationships into consideration, investigative reporters’ sense of belonging which is mainly relied on the subjective value belief is at stake, together with the realistic plight of the investigative reporter’s career development, the characterization of collective memory is more fatigue.The development and evolution of the collective memory mentioned above is to some degree a set of system to reflect the cognitive and emotional tendency of the group members, also an important factor in the formation of group identity. Combined with the connotative requirements of collective memory, firstly, this thesis analyzed the level of the group identity of the investigative reporters from the dimension of individual-group. It founds that the value of the profession itself is recognized by the reporters, but their identities and belongings to the profession are influenced by the state of their personal career development, showing a distinct individual difference. Then, from the dimension of past-present, the tendency of expressing emotion by investigative reporters is becoming more subtle and passive, the collision of material security, public opinion environment and professional ideal is more and more intense, the stability of group identification eventually faces more challenges.