Dead Newspapers In Media Memory:Recall,Archaeology And Struggle For Survival

Since the 21st century,lots of newspapers have ceased their publication,which has become an important social phenomenon and reflected media ecological transformation.For newspapers,dead newspapers are their group members,so the death events of newspapers can be written into the news reports.These reports related to the past,present and future of the newspaper,which turned out to be autobiographical memory about the history of newspaper,thus forming an unique view of media memory.This kind of media memory focused on the important role of media in writing its own history,which is ignored by the current research on media memory.In addition,as a research field with strong sociality and secularity,the research on media and communication habitually marginalises media death,however,life and death are closely linked.Through death,we can obtain the meaning and guidance of life.From the perspective of newspaper memory,this paper aims to focus on the attention of its memory to the dead newspaper,so as to explore the construction of media memory to its own history,and to obtain the enlightenment to the future of newspaper through the death.Though searching and screening the newspaper database,this paper obtained 582newspapers' memory texts about dead newspaper.Based on these texts,this paper adopted text analysis as the main research method and Latent Dirichlet Allocations model analysis as the auxiliary research method to explore how newspapers memorized the dead newspaper and the significance and value of this media memory from the theory of death media and media memory.We found that newspaper's memory of the dead newspaper is the autobiography of newspaper history,from which the past and future of newspaper can be reproduced.The past of the newspaper was filled with the death.The death of newspapers had complicated meanings in memories,such as obsolete,redundant,martyred or failed.However,with the transformation of media ecology and the further development of memory texts,complexity meanings of death are gradually disappeared and simplifiedly defined as obsolete.Looking back to the past not only showed the true history of newspaper death,but also reflected the development process of newspaper industry.Newspaper's memory of death reflected the newspaper's appeals to live from the death and plan for the future.In memory,the future of newspaper was uncertained,and had experienced the transformation from the newspaper to cross-media.However,the memory of newspapers reflected on the concept of media,and accepted the Internet and new media.Facing the technology utopia of the digital age,this kind of memory is the individual explaination and practice of newspapers.As a result,media memory has not only become the autobiographical history of the newspaper industry,but also a ceremony for absorbing strength,a kind of fuel to promote the newspaper to live from the death.Therefore,the death of newspapers should not be forgotten.The study of media memory of newspaper death can help us to increase our understanding of the dead newspapers,enrich our cognition of the newspaper industry history and media history,and reflect on the values of media memory.