The Research On Occupational Identities Of Practitioners In Prefecture-level Television Stations

In 1980s,the Reform and Opening-up brought rising prosperity to all walks of life in China,particularly the radio and television field.The 11^th National Conference of Radio and Television held in March 1983 witnessed the establishment of four-level guidelines,i.e.the development of radios and televisions in four levels:centre-level,theprefecture-level,the city-level and the town-level.Radios and televisions used to be authorized only by the central and provincial levels,but under the guidance of this new policy television stations mushroomed nationwide,especially the prefecture-level television stations.After all these years'development,prefecture-level television stations have helped greatly to spread executive news,enrich people's lives,exchange culture and activate cultural markets;but meanwhile,the fact is that the sense of identity of journalists is degenerating or alienating seriously now.At the beginning of Reform and Opening-up,this group took a great efforts to return from propagandist to journalists,and also publics always label on them prospectors,observers,and public-opinion supervisors.However,those words were changed into paparazzi,news workers,or even some other slogans after the capitalization of public institutions.But most of the journalists are reluctant to accept this kind of evaluation,and they struggle to identify themselves in news practice.So how are the identities of practitioners working in prefecture-level television stations constructed?What are the key elements during this process?How do these elements interact with each other in the mechanism?How to establish the occupational standard?And how will it work?The reason to choose television station Y as the research subject is that the prefecture-level television stations are set up for a relatively short time with a small scale and limited influence and that less attention are paid to these by scholars,which gives us great space to dig deeply and broadly.The thesis outlines the process of news production in prefecture-level stations and examines the informal relationships with other authorities and dynamic characteristics of these stations by focusing on the specific social context,social subjects and news production.Based on above,it intends to figure out the identity-construction process of practitioners in prefecture-level stations,the occupational standard in this field and their cooperation and conflicts with other social subjects from the perspective of sociology of news and sociology of occupation.