A Study Of The Intervention Of Media In The Development Of China's Charities Since The Reform And Opening

Over the forty years since its reform and opening up in 1978,China has made great achievements in its public charity cause.Research has shown that the development of charities interacted and merged with the media.This study adopted the literature research method,the interdisciplinary approach,the method of combining empirical and value analysis,and case study to investigate the development of the intervention of media in China since its reform,make an attempt to advance its academic research,remove people's misunderstanding of it,and deepen the research of the law behind its development.This dissertation includes three parts:introduction,body(four chapters),and conclusion.The first chapter is an overview of the 140-year history of the intervention of media in China's charity cause before its reform and opening.It is stated that this intervention had existed long even before China's reform and had already had a great impact on the development of China's charities.Therefore,its study should be placed in the grand historical background of early modern China,and,most importantly,its laws and experiences could only be known through the review of its early history.The media's intervention began after the Opium War,when new media technology was introduced into China and promoted China's philanthropy.From 1840 to 1949 the press books and pictures publicized charity ideas and introduced western charity causes;Shenjiang Newspaper tried to promote the function of charities,such as reporting disasters,raising funds,publicizing charitable culture,enhancing charitable awareness,publishing its income and expenses,advocating supervision by public voices,following the example of the west countries to give charity performance and parades to raise money.Since then,the form and size of China's charities entered a new period.The new China reformed its charities and government started to interfere most part of civil charity organizations.With the left-leaning ideology prevailing,the supervision over media and its intervention in charities became strict and caused a period of its stagnation.However,it needs to be noticed that the stagnation was more of the media's effect on China's charity than its whole state.The second chapter is an examination of its revival(1978-1994).it studied the historical conditions for its revival,the development and the features of traditional media,and the signs of the revival.There was a large number of people living in poor countryside and there were big gaps between different social ranks.These imbalances were economic conditions for the revival of China's charities.The Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh CPC Central Committee established the ideological line of "freeing our minds and be realistic",which set an amiable political environment for the revival of public welfare charity in China.At that time,Chinese government changed their relief attitude from refusing foreign aid to accepting it.Most significantly,the government began to move their interfere power to civil society,which prepared ideologically for philanthropy's resurgence in China.With the deepening of China's reform,the tie between the traditional media and public charity was strengthened.The development of the traditional media like television,newspaper and broadcast created condition for the spreading of charity information.Its revival was seen as follows:promoting the public re-awareness of philanthropy,leading the public's involvement in charity activities,and advancing the scientific theories conforming to the development law of charities.The third chapter deals with the function of media's intervention in the charity during its growing period(1994-2004).First,it investigated its growing tendency:the traditional media like the newspaper and magazine,and the television,were actively involved in the charity cause;the emerging media forms such as the cell phone and the internet became the new promoting agents.Second it discussed about media enhancing spreading the charity ideas including:advocating modern charity ideology,incorporating charity to the construction of socialist spiritual civilization,mobilizing the public's involvement,advocating modern wealth theory.Moreover,this chapter once again explored the media's promoting effect on the building of charity brands such as "Hope Project".Last,two examples were also cited to illustrate the function of media's invention in the charity cause,one is the media's supervision of publicizing charity information and the other is the flood fighting in the year of 1998.The fourth chapter gives a picture of the function of the intervention in its development phrase(2005-2018).During this period,new forms of media kept emerging;the old and the new competed and some merged for better development;media ecosystem was reconstructed.All these paved an open road for the media's intervention in China's philanthropy.With the increasingly merging of the old and the new media,there formed a new pattern:newspaper allied with new media to promote online public welfare channel;with the aid of new media,the television produced a host of charitable and amusing programs;all sorts of assessments and exhibitions subsequently occurred.As more and more internet media kept appearing,like web portals,web forums,blogs,social websites,and microblogs,a sea change took place in the charity's information spreading,fund raising,mobilizing ways,and public opinion supervision.The internet changed from”an information carrier" to a leading part in the charity cause.A typical case,among others,is "free lunch",which made full use of internet to set up a new mode of the efficient operation of charities.Hence,a new age of "micro public good" opened up,which integrated to the full extent all sorts of sources,widened the channels to its publicizing and spreading,and mobilized the involvement of all ranks of social forces.However,the function of media's intervention in charities is a double-blade sword because it has both positive and negative effects.The positive effect can easily be seen in "Wenchuan Earthquake" when the media spread tragedy stories around and aroused a nation-wide moved-and-caring relief,whereas the notorious "Guo meimei Scandal" triggered a crisis of the public trust in China's charity organizations.The problems caused in media's intervention must be solved through the improvement of charitable legislation.Fortunately,the enactment of "Charity Law" has put the China's media intervention in charities on a legal road.