| City image is people’s comprehensive evaluation and overall impression of city politics,economy,culture and society,and it is the result of long-term impression accumulation.Therefore,it is of great reference value and enlightenment for understanding,constructing and managing the city image to study the present situation and the changing course of the city image in the past.In the past 40 years of reform and opening up,Dongguan has rapidly changed from a poor agricultural county to a new first-tier city.Due to the rapid social transformation in Dongguan in the past,Dongguan’s urban management was once lagging behind,and problems occurred frequently in the process of social development,which brought serious negative impacts on Dongguan’s city image,and even was once labeled as "sweatshop","cultural desert" and "sex capital".In addition,in the past,Dongguan focused on economic development and neglected the management of city image for a long time,which led to Dongguan being unable to get rid of the trouble of negative city image.Therefore,Dongguan urgently needs to manage and improve its city image.This study takes People’s Daily as the research object,and uses the methods of literature research,content analysis and text analysis to analyze the Dongguan-related reports of People’s Daily in the past 40 years of reform and opening-up,and to explore the image of Dongguan and its changing process.This paper investigates Dongguan’s city image in the dynamic historical development process,in order to have a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding of Dongguan’s city image and its changing process,and provide reference for Dongguan to better understand,construct and manage its own city image.Through the statistics and analysis of Dongguan reports of People’s Daily in the past 40 years of reform and opening up,it is found that:(1)The emphasis of Dongguan city image presented by People’s Daily in different periods is different.Generally speaking,Dongguan’s city image has become prominent from a single economic image to a trend of increasingly prominent city images in various dimensions.Especially,social image and cultural image.(2)In positive reports,economic reports and social reports account for a large proportion.Therefore,in the image of Dongguan presented by People’s Daily,the positive image is more focused on the economic image and social image,while the cultural image and political image are relatively less displayed.(3)In negative reports,social reports and political reports account for a large proportion.Therefore,in the image of Dongguan presented by People’s Daily,the negative images are more concentrated in social image and political image.As the organ newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China,People’s Daily,adhering to the principle of objectivity,has truly recorded the development process of Chinese society,which to a certain extent represents the general picture of Dongguan city image presented by mainstream media.Therefore,it also reveals that Dongguan can try to adjust its city image communication strategy when carrying out the city image communication in the future:(1)By digging and displaying more efforts and achievements in Dongguan’s political and cultural construction,it can strengthen the positive image in Dongguan’s political and cultural image,enrich the dimension of the city’s positive image and improve the city’s comprehensive popularity.(2)Change people’s stereotypes and enhance the overall goodwill and reputation of Dongguan by showing more efforts and achievements in social governance and political construction. |
