The Reporting Framework And Narrative Strategies Of Populist News

With the uprising of mass media,people's dependence on mass media has been strengthened.To a great extent,media reports are defining the direction of public opinion.On the one side,the facts that being sent in front of people are spreading through media reports.On the other side,people seem to know nothing about the facts if the incidents are not being unveiled by media.Normally,the news media is the witness and recorder of the facts.A news report reflects the reality of the society and has deep influence on social psychology.It even plays a critical role in the beginning and developing process of the news incident.In a word,the social influence of mass media can not be ignored.In the news industry of China,the authority and credibility of mass media are facing severe challenges.Journalistic professionalism is under the pressure of market competition and public opinion storms.The authority of journalists is facing collapse.The professionalism and independence of journalists are gradually fainting in the oppression of populism.This dissertation consists of six parts.The first part is the introduction,which offers a brief introduction to the background,and the significance and methodology of the research.The second chapter starting with the basic theory of populism and straightens up the historical origin of populist news,which can help defining the concept of the research.In this chapter,the research object and scope are also been explained clearly.The third chapter make a textual analysis of several typical news reports,reflect the reporting of populist news has the typical characteristic of “Binary Opposition”,which is argued through the following aspects.Firstly,rubricize or tagging on a group of people with high social status or wealth in news headlines has strengthened the stereotype prejudice on them.Secondly,sensationalism on news reporting has leaded to excessive sympathy compensation for the weak.Thirdly,the critical position of “civilian” is easy to guide the public opinion towards moralism and impact the judicial justice.The fourth chapter is focusing on four typical strategies of populist news from the perspective of narratology,including the tragic narration with the aim of extensive emotional mobilization,the grassroots narration through creating moral models blindly,the conflict narration by stigmatizing the strong and awakening the collective memory of the weak and the entertainment narration with the purpose to attractive the public's attention by deconstruction of mainstream values.Through the study of the four narrative strategies,this chapter evaluates the appeal mechanism of the populist narrative structure to the public opinion,which will provide guidance for the future news production practice.The fifth chapter summarizes the causes of populist news in China from the internal perspective and external perspective,Respectively from the cultural background,industry attributes,occupation identity,technical change and market driven aspects.The last sixth chapters are the concluding remarks of this article,reflecting on the impact and internal mechanism of populist news.This paper affirms that news and politics are closely linked but also there is a certain distance,and media has the interest demands of audience and market.The phenomenon of populist tendency is the result of multiple factors: the disparity between the rich and poor,the participation channel is not smooth,the judicial relief is not perfect,triggered by the Internet group polarization and etc.In the rationality of populism on respecting the people's value and analyzes the extremity and harmfulness of populism in China,where the socialism core value system leads the multicultural development.Therefore,based on the appreciation of the rationality and reasonableness of populism,the negative effects of populism could be eliminated effectively.