http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/5382 Sat, 15 Jun 2013 10:14:53 GMT 2013-06-15T10:14:53Z http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/6922 Title: Shifting prisms of China : U.S. correspondents as an interpretive community, 1972-2000 Authors: Song, Yunya (宋韻雅) Abstract: U.S. media coverage of China is determined not only by what is happening in China, but also by what is happening in the U.S. and what is happening to the U.S.-China relations. This study seeks to relate the analysis of U.S. media texts to the contextual changes of China, the U.S. and bilateral relations from 1972 to 2000. American media perceptions of China have traditionally alternated between distaste and adulation. After President Nixon's landmark visit to China in 1972, the U.S. press corps has experienced another pendulum swing. Absent the "I" of authors in news reports as an "objectivity" code, little if anything could be learned about the change or continuity of the journalists' attitudes and beliefs from the media texts themselves. As such, this study probes into the books penned by these reporters, attempting to examine the self-reflexive dimension in "China Assignment" and explain the "pendulum swing" with an "interpretive community" approach that patterns many of their prisms. Specifically, this study asks: (1) what "myth structures" does the U.S. press corps invoke to forge their prisms of China as an interpretive community? (2) If the pendulum swing also characterizes these reporters' prisms of China in their books, how does such a tendency relate to their preconceptions and local contacts? (3) What are the nuances and variations in each swing of this pendulum, and to what extent do they relate to the international context of Cold War, U.S.-China relations, transformations in China, domestic perceptions of China in the U.S., the ideological persuasion of media organizations, and individual judgment values? This thesis argues that the ability to apply a journalistic interpretation of occurrences in China correspondence will vary by the scope and depth of their contacts in China, which, in turn, will be mediated by their preconceptions grounded in U.S. domestic perceptions of China. My investigation proceeds at two stages: (1) patterned relations among the authors, the people, and institutions are extracted to draw the reporters' contacts. (2) I will use Gamson and Modigliani's (1989) "constructionist approach to discourse analysis" to distill "ideological packages" of their prisms. This study concludes that there emerge three meta-narratives in these books from 1972 to 2000: "the virtuous New China" (1972-1979), "the promising going-capitalist China" (1979-1989), and "the ironic rising China" (1989-2000). The inscription and unlearning of these mythic categories have testified to the pendulum principle. The polarized reversal has much to do with the reporters' persistent tendency to carry preconceptions that wished for empirical verification, and there remains a propensity to make sweeping moral judgments in light of such "enduring values" as "freedom," "justice," and "individualism." Their preconceptions echo the rise and fall of institutional authority and public cynicism when facing such critical incidents as the withdrawal from the Vietnam War and the end of the Cold War. Meanwhile, the pendulum is partly the result of limited liberalization in China. From the Mao era to Deng's reform era, China has been undergoing tremendous transformations during the historically most dynamic 1980s and in the aftermath of the Tiananmen incident. Throughout, a systematic discourse analysis shows that the U.S. press corps adapts the mythic formula partly from the fluctuating Chinese officials' interpretations, and partly from the shifting available contacts in the field. These journalistic accounts- which are often Beijing-oriented and written from the viewpoint of a particular segment of Chinese population-are nevertheless not representative of "China's reality. Notes: CityU Call Number: PN4888.C54 S66 2012; vi, 267 leaves 30 cm.; Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2012.; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 239-267) Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/6922 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/6921 Title: Stardom in the view of media power : reproduction of media power in the case of Li Yuchun Authors: Cui, Li (崔麗) Abstract: The purpose of this study is to examine the stardom of Li Yuchun, a star from Super Girls' Voice (an American Idol-type show), which in 2005 was one of the most successful television entertainment programs in China, in the view of media power. Based on Couldry's (2000) framework of media power, which focus on the symbolic boundary between the media world and the ordinary world, this study attempts to explore how audiences of ordinary people and media people, respectively, construct the stardom of Li Yuchun, how she became well-known with the support of audience votes, and whether the constructions of the audience and that of media people vary. Moreover, the questions of whether the symbolic boundary between the media world and the ordinary has been maintained in the case of Li Yuchun' stardom, and whether the media or the audience represent the main supporter of this boundary also will be explored. The difference between Li Yuchun and other stars from talent shows, and other stars made in traditional ways, and its implications for the Chinese entertainment industry and popular culture, will be discussed as well. Notes: CityU Call Number: P94.5.C452 C65 2012; iv, 234 leaves 30 cm.; Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2012.; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 215-231) Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/6921 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/6506 Title: Discursive contestation in China's marketized media : coverage of the torch relay incident in Beijing Olympics Authors: Zhang, Wei ( 張薇) Abstract: After three decades of economic reform, mass media in China have had to meet the challenges of political pressure and fierce market competition. These challenges have produced ideological contestation between media discourses. This study focuses on the coverage of the torch relay incidents prior to the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008 by the Global Times and the Southern Metropolis Daily, both of which set the boundary of official tolerance over media discourse on issues of political controversy. The Global Times, a subsidiary of the People’s Daily that reflects the Chinese government’s foreign policy, constructed the torch relay as a showcase of the prowess and achievements of the party-state so as to justify the legitimacy of the regime as well as to arouse nationalistic emotions against foreign criticism. It seeks to commodify official ideology as profitable information goods through sensationalized discursive strategies. On the other hand, the Southern Metropolis Daily, which is widely regarded as the most liberal and outspoken newspaper in China, framed the same event as an opportunity to reflect on how China can be a member of the international community. It adopts the professional convention of balance reporting to champion the universal values as embraced by the Olympic Games. Finally, the study maintained that marketization has partially expanded the ideological boundary of media discourses in China. Notes: CityU Call Number: GV721.92 .Z45 2010; iv, 106 leaves : ill. 30 cm.; Thesis (M.Phil.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2010.; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 98-102) Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/6506 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/6505 Title: Growth model of online friendship and individual, dyadic, and network determinants Authors: Zhang, Lun ( 張倫) Abstract: The online social networking sites (SNSs), which have rocketed from technique engaging niche users into a dominant online communication platform engaging millions of users, may change the pattern of online interpersonal communication. The study found that dyadic characteristics and structural factors largely determined the behavior of friendship formation, rather than characteristics of users. The data of the current study are collected from one of the largest SNS platforms in China, coving the first two years (2006-07) since its inception, during which time most users of the SNS were college students. The dataset records an anonym zed ID, demographic characteristics, a list of bidirectional friends and the time of the friendship formation. In total, 10 million users and 200 million bidirectional ties are involved. Using polynomial logistic regression to fit the time path of friendship formation for each individual user, the study finds that the increase in the number of friends for each user typically follows a Logistic function with time, indicating that the growth of friends starts slowly at the beginning, speeds up rapidly after reaching a critical point, and then tapers off finally. More importantly, the trajectories appear uniformly, if not identically, across individuals who joined the social network at quite different points in time, suggesting a high degree of regularity in user behavior when forming friendship. This study further examines the growth trajectory of friendship of the entire SNS, and compares the resulting of global-level trajectory with the individual-level trajectories. Surprisingly, there emerges a strong self-similarity in the growth of friendship between the individual level and the global level, which reinforces the regularity of social friendship formation behavior. Although users show a similar time path of adding friends, there are substantial differences across individuals in the sheer size of their friendship networks. As the second research objective, the study examines the effects of three sets of factors, including characteristics of network structure, characteristics of dyadic friendship, and characteristics of individual users, on the likelihood of the friendship formation. Of the factors under study, Balance Structure and the Cohesiveness of User's Ego Network (which involves the user as the "ego-center" and only directly-related friends as other members of the network) are the two most dominant factors influencing the tie formation. Contrary to the prevailing theory of "Preferential Attachment" in the previous literature, friendship formation is positively related to Homophily of Degree (i.e, number of friends), which means that people make friends with similar (rather than famous) others. In addition, the Popularity of the user and his/her Experience with using the SNS has a negative effect on friendship formation, i.e., users with higher popularity or longer SNS using history are less likely to add new friends. Likewise, Homophily of Experience has also a negative effect on friendship formation in that users become increasingly inclined to establish friendship with those with different duration of experience with the SNS (i.e., veteran users are more likely to add new comers whereas new comers more likely to team up with veterans), which suggests that friendship formation is a dynamic process throughout which users change their friendship strategies over time. Finally, individual characteristics, such as Sex and level of online Self-Disclosure, do not have any significant effect on the tie formation, which in fact strengthens the importance of structural factors reported above. The findings of structural effects on friendship formation sheds some lights on social media marketing in the sense that online marketers could choose marketing information initiators according to users network positions, rather than users SNS usage frequency or motivation. In addition, this study also has some practical implications on SNS operators. Considering the strategy of retaining user loyalty, SNS operators should focused more on the friendship maintenance, such as encouraging the creation of user generated contents and developing tools to facilitate information sharing, rather than simply encouraging friendship formation since most users will stop adding new friends after they reach their saturation point. Notes: CityU Call Number: HM742 .Z44 2011; x, 181 leaves : ill. 30 cm.; Thesis (Ph.D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2011.; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 117-135) Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://dspace.cityu.edu.hk:80/handle/2031/6505 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z