| Contemporary societies are composed of a number of competing and semi-autonomous institutional orders or "institutions", which are conceptualized and operationalized in this study as the power relations exerted by the social groups or institutions as a whole. Specialized in its "social media" properties, news institution acts as a platform for both conflict and interaction of social institutions. A preliminary assessment of the interaction mode between news institution and its institutional context, as well as a deliberate consideration of institutional efficiency shaped by the autonomy of news institution itself, can be sufficient for an interpretation of the social outcome for news institutional action.Three chief factors of social institutional powers in this dissertation will be summarized, namely the state/political institution, economic institution and social cultural institution, to suggest that the institutionalised procedure and outcome of news discourse can be shaped (either facilitated or restrained) first of all by the journalistic institution's positioning vis-a-vis other powerful institutions, chiefly the political and economic institution, and second of all, by factors internal to the news institution per se.Discourse power in the international communication is the consequence of power relations shaping the political discourse in the journalistic institution. Discourse construction is a process of shaping social reality by the journalistic institution exerting its power in a specific institutional context or social power relations.The institutional construction process of discourse is an institutional action for the power relations to enframe the social imagination and social identity through the representation of symbolic power,and achieve ultimately the social construct of reality by the deployment of incorporation, professionalization and institutionalization. News institution is one of the determinants of the construct of discourse power, and a social actor as well.The exercising of social power is to support the powerful actors in societal institutions to manufacture a "ubiquity in social life" and give rise to a "universal truth" in the process of social construct of reality and the framing of social actions.The so-called "universal truth", i.e., the "knowledge" framework formed from the social powers of institutions, is a set of social standards and norms for public application, constructed and dispersed by the social powers (nation-state or groups). In the specific context of societal institutions, the mode of power relations in discursive practice shapes the formal "knowledge" system which is also manufactured and mediated by news institution in the process of discourse construction.Based on the assessment of institutional action, a relatively extensive analysis framework of news institution is designed for this study, involving the interaction between the news institution and the social institutions as a whole, which will be the independent variables in the conceptual framework, in aid of which to evaluate the internal effectiveness of the news institution, meanwhile, to explain the impact of various power relations mediated by the news institution on its social action.Consistent differences in the journalistic fields between China and the West can be originally rooted in the fundamental discrepancies of bilateral theoretical principles, which serve, in the historical development of the world journalistic institutions, as the crucial determinants of the radical distinction in the course of international discourse construction and its result, in particular, the conflict of discourse is believed to be the most significant symbolic representation of the differentiation in political field.The reproduction of institutional powers is based on privileged access to news events and valued news discourse. With the approach of news discourse analysis, this study, sampling the news pieces from China Daily and CNN, attempts to verify the priority of social powers, the degree of force monopoly as well as the diversity of media culture in China and the West.The effect of institutional factors on the differentiation of discourse power construction between China and the West in the cross-national communication, are pertaining to the various modes of power relations in journalistic field,which result in the bias of power in news institutional context, chiefly the political and economic fields, in respect to the boost or suppression of discourse reproduction, are supposed to be the strongest causal claims in turn to indicate the diverse shaping of discourse.A content analysis is adopted to testify systematically that the tones and schemes of news framed in China Daily much differ from those in New York Times, thus imply the obvious distinctions of the commerce-driven news institution in the US vis-a-vis the politics-driven news institution in China. Commercial tide has gradually wiped away the economic disparities between China and the West. As a result, a tendency to global convergence of the discourse function appears in the international communication. However, the divergence of news schemes affected by the political fields in China versus the West remains nearly unchanged.The instituional construct of discourse power in the international communication is a procedure of professionalization and institutionalization in the discourse reproduction. In the view of duality of social structure, it is an institutional optimization to establish a "China standard" in terms of professional powers, namely, the institutionalization of formal news knowledge. Furthermore, A new mechanism of optimal allocation for the discursive dissemination is to be set up in the name of the state for our national media to elevate its discourse power in the intense competition of global communication. |
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