A News Construction Study On The Issue Of Domestic Violence In China

Domestic violence is one of the many forms of the violence against women,which is remain unseen because it happened in the private space of the family.However,the results of domestic violenve are often very serious.In the field of news communication of China,there is a lack of research on the news construction of domestic violence issues,and the quantity of the related researches is small while the content appears to be simplex.The starting point of this study is the constructive difference between "country"power and "market" power on the gender issue of domestic violence.In this paper,I argue that the current situation of gender equality in China is characterized by "the policy forward but the reality backward".By that I mean that the regulations and policies which are under the control of state's ideology showing the absolute equality between men and women,while the market rules which are under the control of economic interests often displayed the trend of materialization and discrimination against women.Between the policy and the reality there is a great gap.This research adopts content analysis and frame analysis as methodology,taking the People's Daily,Guangming daily,as well as the Jiefang daily as the sample of official newspapers,and the Southern metropolis daily,Chutian metropolis daily as well as Huaxi metropolis daily as the sample of metropolitan newspapers.In order to observe the difference between different type of media which are under the control power of "government—market".The results show that there are five different frames existing in the sample:"social intervention","humanity","police frame","conflict",and "the fact".The "social intervention" is the dominant news frame which is used most frequently by the official newspapers and the metropolitan newspapers.In comparison,the official newspapers tend to use single news frame while the metropolitan newspaper use a variety of news frames.These five frameworks adopt different narrative strategies and rhetorical devices in the process of frameworking and organization.The official newspapers appear to construct the issue of domestic violence along the path of“social problem"--"omniscience narrative"--"metaphor".However,the metropolitan newspapers are more likely to construct the issue of domestic violence along the path of "individual problem"--"dramatic narrative"--"exaggeration".The research also finds that while the official newspapers differ from the metropolitan newspapers,there are still some similarities exist between the both.The influence of "government" power is not equal with the "market"power.The "government" power is the dominant power and the "market"power is attached to the "government" power.