Research On The Construction Of The Media Image Of Rural Teachers In "People’s Daily" (2015-2020 Years)

Education is the foundation of a country’s development and the cornerstone of national rejuvenation,and rural education is an important part of the country’s current rural rejuvenation strategy.For the improvement of the quality of rural education,the position of rural teachers is particularly essential.In 2015,the General Office of the State Council promulgated the "Rural Teacher Support Plan(2015-2020)",and then various provinces across the country had successively issued relevant implementation plans.The whole society,including the media,paid more and more attention to rural teachers.Among the many mainstream media,People’s Daily,as an official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party,is the most representative,influential,leading,disseminating,and credible one.It is also one of the first media to focus on rural teachers.The media image of these rural teachers described by it is particularly important for the development of rural teachers and the construction of rural education.This article will select the news reports of the People’s Daily from 2015 to 2020 as the research sample,which is the same period as the implementation of the policy.And it will use the content analysis method to study these news reports on rural teachers and the media image they depict,sorting out and categorizing different types of images.Furthermore,understand the real images of rural teachers through interviews,compare with these in news reports,analyze the differences and causes,and propose optimization strategies for mainstream media reports.The study finds that in the past five years,when the People’s Daily reported on rural teachers,the gender and age distribution of the characters was relatively even.However,from the perspective of teaching age,it was more inclined to report on rural teachers with more than ten years of experience.In terms of reporting areas,rural teachers in the central and western regions had a higher exposure rate than those teachers in the eastern places.In addition,the People’s Daily reports on rural teachers showed small changes in the number of reports in recent years,uneven distribution of genres,imbalances in the nature and tendencies of the reports,and a slightly single reporting form.The research suggested that the People’s Daily presented certain professional and social images of rural teachers in its news reports from 2015 to 2020.The professional image included “Stand on a three-foot teaching podium,ten years perseverance”,“Multitasking to make up for the shortcomings of education”,"Practitioners who take initiative in practices presented outstanding results in teaching and research”,“Aspiring people who worry about the gap between urban and rural areas and improving professionalism”,“Contributors who care about and support the growth of students”,“Dedicated young teachers without hesitation”.The social image included "Beneficiaries who receive help","Participants who care about society",“Naive victims" and "All-around candidates”.After interviews with ten rural teachers,it found that in reality,rural teachers were more focused on the four professional images of “working multiple jobs”,“looking for self-improvement”,“yearning for urban life” and “Work burnout”,and the two social images of “lack of self-confidence” and “needing attention”.These two social images are different from those portrayed by mainstream media.Regarding the news report on the media image of rural teachers in the People’s Daily,this study believes that there are insufficient overall attention and few in-depth reports;the image of the report is "deified" and "weakened";the report topics are unbalanced and insufficient.Combining content analysis and interviews,in response to the above issues,this research proposes to focus on the depth and increase the number of reports;to have multi-dimensional attention to shape ordinary heroes;balance development and enrich reporting topics;use Internet platform as guidance to strengthen future expectations and prospects,in a hope that People’s Daily can reproduce a more comprehensive,objective and real media image of rural teachers.By sorting out and studying the image of rural teachers portrayed by the People’s Daily and the real image of rural teachers,this research can actively guide the audience to understand the media image of rural teachers comprehensively and rationally,and can even play a positive role in enhancing the attractiveness of rural teachers.In addition,it provides an optimized path for mainstream media to report on rural teachers more objectively and truthfully,which enables the media can describe and reproduce the image of rural teachers to the greatest extent in future reports.Finally,the time point of the sample selected in this article is consistent with that of "Rural Teacher Support Plan(2015-2020)",and it can compare and understand various media image and real image of rural teachers in the process of implementing the plan,and provide a certain reference for the further implementation of such strategies or plans in the future.