The Interweaving Of Politics, Markets And Media Culture

In the process of China's social transformation, democracy, market economy and multiple values are interweaving. As a reflection of social reality, news production is the critical node of wrestle and negotiation of these factors. Adopting the perspective of sociology of news production, this paper tried to describe and analyze how social control factors like politics,markets and media culture affect news production of Southern Weekly from 1984 to 2014.Southern weekly has undergone the whole process of both social transformation and media reform in China. It is a sample to understand China's media environment in the period of social transformation. Through participant observation, in-depth interviews, historical analysis and other methods, this paper divided Southern Weekly's development into three phases:market-oriented period(1984-1995), politic-oriented period(1996-2006) and media culture-oriented period(2007-2014).The study found that the news production of Southern Weekly based on a variety of social control factors which interweaved and influenced each other in the daily news production, and were always in flux. Political factor in news production showed a interactive power mode which was characterized by conflict/negotiation. The communication concept of audience-centered which was the expression of market factor drove direction transmutation of news production.The impact of media culture in news production reflected on the practice of power in newsroom in which value concept was the core.