The Media Presentation And Reconstruction Of The Images Of Contemporary Universities In China

In the information age, media are endowed with the power of selecting and explaining information, and the capability to influence the society as well. As public instrument, media on the one hand supervise and report news about universities; on the other hand it can be effective channels and means to build good images of universities in the society. According to Lippman’s theory of pseudo-environment, in the modern society with highly developed mass media, the formation of "subjective reality" largely depends on media. Moreover, media play a significant role in the formation of people’s "subjective reality". Based on this theory, we can assume that the public know a particular university mostly through the media. On this aspect, the "subjective reality" is just the public image of a university. We can learn from this reality that the formation of this "subjective reality" may be influenced by many factors, so that the image of a university may be quite different from the reality of itself.In the academic point of view, the formation and presentation of the image of a university is a process of dynamic feedback, continuous modification and supplementation. As a university is a large and complicated social institution, the key to the study of its media image lies in exploring the relationship among "reality","media" and "cognitive result". Mass media create a pseudo-environment, on which the audience based to know the reality and make decisions. This reference obviously has its own limitations, as its isomorphism with or contrast against reality can greatly influence our perception. However, we cannot live without mass media, because it’s a comparatively convenient way to know the world in this more and more complicated and rapid developing world. Based on the three-dimensional context of identification, trust and cooperation, this dissertation attempts to construct a new dimension and approach for the study of the media image of universities from the perspectives of universities, media and public relations.The introduction part first explains the background and significance of this study. Then it reviews the existing literature on the study of national image both in china and abroad, and expounds the specific object, method and characteristics of these studies. Based on the previous study, the author draws a general outline of the study on the media image of university in this part and introduces the method of this study. Based on a joint study of history and reality, the first chapter traces people’s understanding of the images of universities, and investigates the historical development of these images in China which have changed with the social environment and those in the western countries which have changed with social functions. With this analysis, this chapter draws a basic route of the development of universities at home and abroad from medieval times until now, and crystallizes the core value of university spirit, which is the soul of a university and the conceptual basis of the construction of university imageThe second chapter analyses the essential attributes of university image, and states the factors of the presentation of university image, such as university natural image, university historical image, university president’s image, university teacher’s image, university academic image, and university cultural image, etc. This chapter also illuminates the mechanism and theory of the interaction between universities and the society with the participation of media, which emphasizes on the influence of mass media on the construction of university image. With a comparison between two ideas of the construction of university image, this chapter further explains the process of this construction under the impact of mass media.Taking three kinds of newspapers, namely Guangming Daily, Southern Weekly and Changjiang Daily as the objects of study, the third chapter analyzes the topics, content and statistic data about the reports on universities on these three newspapers from September30th,2011to September30th,2013. By statistic analysis, this chapter analyzed the inclination of media report on universities, and the results identify this reality. The fourth chapter again takes a specific university as study object, further analyses the newspaper reports on this university in2012, and identified the existence of the mismatch of contemporary university images. Moreover, this chapter points out the important reasons of this mismatch in China, which are the transition of society, the popularity of utilitarianism, the breakdown of value system, and the shaking of trust. At last, it analyses the origin of trust issues of universities in China and the traditional foundation of the trust of society in universities. Then this part further clarifies two aspects of the returning of university spirit and the reconstruction of university images. One is the self-modification of universities’own public images and the other is the reconstruction of media images.The conclusion of this dissertation points out that only under the conditions of the return of the university spirit, the reestablishment of the subject status of universities, the sticking to the intellectual disposition and core value system, and the reshaping of the academic character, can the images of contemporary Chinese universities be reconstructed.To sum up, the construction of good university image requires the precious internal direction of university spirit, such as justice and equality, democracy and freedom, being human-oriented, respecting academic research, and shouldering social responsibilities, which any university should follow in order to shape good image. However, once this good image is shaped, it must face reasonable ethical evaluation from the society and the public for the reason that the continuous evaluation and identification is the internal variables contributing to the eternal vitality of good university image.