Public Sphere Construction Of 《Southern Weekend》

Media is closely related to the real society, on the one hand, media reflect the social reality, on the other hand, the media, in turn, construct the social reality. Southern Weekend as a newspaper with a history of29years, each circulation steadily over1.6million copies, and core readership as knowledgeable readers, has national and world-known influences. Praised by liberal intellectuals, The New York Times describes Southern Weekend as "China’s most influential liberal newspaper".This article attempts to analyze the front-page report of the Southern Weekend through the methods of case studies, discourse analysis and content analysis, and to discuss the problems of 《Southern Weekend》 on the public domain constructions. This article introduce the media discourse analysis to the studies of the Southern Weekend, starting with the Southern Weekend newspaper concepts, from the themes, titles, pictures, report ways and the viewing angles of the front page reports, explore the public domain construction path of the Southern Weekend. This article selects samples of all the front page reports of the first half of2013(January1-June30), total25issues, and omit the New Year’s inscription on January1, study on their themes, titles, pictures, report ways and viewing angles. The innovation point of this article is with the public domain as the breakthrough point, analyzes the construction role of media discourse, playing a certain development role on the research orientation of Chinese comprehensive paper media.The whole study is divided into four parts; the first part summarizes the research background, theoretical framework and research methods of the article. The second part, starting from the Southern Weekend newspaper concept, discusses the purpose and the concept of the periodical, laying a foundation for the analysis of the discourse construction. The third part, through the analysis of the types and reported tendency of the front-page report, interpret how Southern Weekend select topics; through the analysis of the title structure and rhetorical content, present how the front-page report headlines of Southern Weekend realize the expression of public opinions; through the analysis of the image types, functions and specific case analysis images of the front-page reports to analyze the effects of image; and through the method of discourse analysis and content analysis to make detailed interpretation of the report content, and then analyze the interpretation process of Southern Weekend on news fact. Finally the fourth part conclusion makes a comprehensive summary and analysis of the Southern Weekend on the construction of public domain, and puts forward suggestions for further research.