From Real To Representation: The Constructed Judge's Image

The judges as a spokesman for the administration of justice, its image will directly affect public confidence in the judiciary, so the image of the media representation of judges is important. This paper, based on the social stratification, the media constructed theories and so on, studied in the way of "the objective reality - the media reality - the audience reality", analyzed and the process of building the image of judges, and reflected the convergence and deviation among the three.This study was supported by the introduction, conclusion and four main discuss issues. The paper focuses on analyzing the links and the bias among the true image of the judges, the media image and the audience.First, we get a deep understanding of the judge in the reality by interviewing and analyzed their identities, social status, gender differences and other aspects by sociology. And then proposed the definition of the true image of the judge: the judge is a group of professional people who have jurisdiction over and placed in the upper social strata of the multi-faceted with the powerful, experience the progress and difficulties, honor and pressure at the same time.Second, on the basis of reproduced theories, and content analysis as the main research methods, through the print media regarding the "judges" of the news for statistical analysis, we got the features of the media image of the judges and discussed the image of the judges through the view of the media. We found the following characters: Firstly, the media was reported with a small number, little efforts and have a single content. Secondly, different media have diversified media representations, and different types of media have different reporting tendencies. Thirdly, the majority of reports are from government, the media spread the image of judges for the audience in a one-way mode of transmission. Fourthly, the newspaper and media set a general image for the judges who are kind to the people and positive, that is"to carry out legal education for the public positively, have living standards as general public and have a high degree of social responsibility", "justice and efficient, with good education and training mechanisms". Fifthly, the media's representations of groups of judges appear a tendency of stereotypical and orientation.Third, we sampled on the form of a questionnaire survey of the different audience groups, and tried to understand the audience's awareness of judges and the media representation's influence on their cognitive effort. Survey results show that the eyes of the audience for the judge groups have been established in a relatively fixed image: the judge are occupational groups who are of high social status, certain words of power, have more pressure of survival and lack of kindness, full of neutral colors. And the mass media played an important role in influencing the audience in cognition.Fourth, in the way of "the objective reality - the media reality - the audience reality", distinguish the true image of judges, the media image form the audience image, we summed up the convergences and deviations in reproduction process and analyzed the causes of deviations. We found that the construction of the image that the judge were placed in a complex ideological control. Under the operation of ideology and power, the media can not fully judge the judge's true image.Finally, in the last part of the paper, I made some suggestions for the existed questions of the image constructed by the media.