Media Literacy Of The Middle Class And Class Identity, Self-identity

Based on a positive research, this article analysed the media literacy characteristics of social members whose socioeconomic status is located in middle class, as well as whose influences on their generation process of class identity. The author holds that an independent middle class has been forming in contemporary urban China as represented by Shanghai. The middle class's segmentation of cognition on the upper class or lower class indicates their emerging independence of objective status, but also leads to the dependence on mass media for knowledge of alien classes. The collideds between their media literacy with branding of social structure transformation and the acute reforming in mass media market leads to the perception distortion of alien classes, the blowup of sense of relative deprivation, and the enhance of perception of social stratification. On the other side, they are deprived of the rights to discourse their class in the public realm so that they cannot gain enough legitimacy in the sociocultural system. The interaction effect of above factors causes their class identity delimma, which could retard them developping higher-leveled class consciousness and reaching the well integration of this neonatal middle class.