Analyzing Media Hero Reports And Intercultural Identity Construction In The New York Times And Guangming Dail Y (2010-2011)

The construction of one’s identity is a dynamic and never-ending process. In thenew era and environment of globalization, one sees evidence of more and moreintercultural communication. This means that new values and modes of life arecontinuously challenging familiar traditions. Facing these new issues, no one canavoid the reconceptualization, redefinition, or reconstruction of one’s own identity, orof seeking to clarify the identity of “the Other”. Due to the different levels ofdevelopment of different societies, people may find themselves asking questions likethese when communicating interculturally:“Who are ‘we’ in this new world order?”“Are we going to lose our particularities in facing other cultures or the spread ofcommercalism?” or “Is intercultural identity construction a one-sided assimilation?”To answer these questions, the author has focused on media coverage of heroes atnational and international levels as the basis for an inquiry into intercultural identityconstruction. Based on selection criteria,77local and world heroes covered in100reports by The New York Times and Guangming Daily in2010and2011were gatheredand analyzed for this study. Fifty-eight American and Chinese national heroes and19world heroes were highlighted in order to analyze how intercultural identities areconstructed. In pursuit of an intercultural heroes’ identities (ICHI) construction model,this study adopted the Two Direction Extension Model (TDEM) proposed by DaiXiaodong (戴晓东)(Dai,2010/2011), and the Integrated Identity Matrix Theory (IIMT)by Steve J. Kulich (Kulich,2010b/2012), and employed media content analysisapproaches. Qualitative and quantitative methods were combined toward developing aconstruction model for ICI.By selecting two well-known newspapers representing an important segment ofthese respective national cultures, this study examined the values, missions,achievements, outcomes, rewards, and different comments that indicate how thesemedia chose or and created heroic identities. Three hypotheses were put forward, analyzed, and each were confirmed in thepresent study:1) Even in this world of democratization and globalization, situated heroes stillexist, and local heroes are quite different in varied cultural contexts. Chinesehero construction in the media is very different from that in Americancontexts.2) Intercultural heroes resemble each other. The reported identity of foreignheroes in both Chinese and American media share many traits andcharacteristics.3) Intercultural hero construction in the media and intercultural identityconstruction are positively correlated to each other.A coding scheme was developed and applied to data analysis. Generally speaking,the Chinese heroes reported in Guangming Daily are more oriented toward morality,while the heroes reported in the New York Times are more achievement-oriented. TheChinese heroes studied are more likely to be from a group that serves the public,while the American heroes are ordinary people. The international heroes reported,however, generally share some universal values related to the aforementionedmorality and achievement-orientation, but not traits that reflect more extreme localorientations such as personal sacrifice (in China) or sports-achievement (in the US).By analyzing these local and world media propagated heroic identities, the authorfound that the construction model of ICI does indeed follow Dai’s TDEM, reflectingco-created and co-experienced identities from two or more sources, instead of aone-sided assimilation. It is also to a great extent determined by perceptions of themainstream culture and the trend of world values, which are considered as seeking“social opportunities” or accomodating to “social imposition” in Kulich’s IIMTtheory.This study has significance both theoretically and practically. First, whatever theintended purpose of the original news, hero coverage by the mass media may beviewed as a representation of intercultural identity construction and could therefore beanalyzed to contribute to the present identity study. Second, the two new theories, TDEM and IIMT were analyzed, evaluated, applied, and confirmed in the context ofmass media in order to further develop an the intercultural identity construction model.Third, by analyzing media hero reports, a media hero identity model as well as ageneral construction model of intercultural identity were explicated.