Research Of The Dissemination Of Leaders’ Image In The New Media Environment

On December,2012, Xinhua News Agency published a series of feature articles about the seven new Politburo Standing Committees, and it is the first time the Chinese media reports leaders’ early work-life photos, experiences, and even family details to the public. And the articles were spread out in English internationally.Foreign media commented that it was a noteworthy political signal that Chinese Communist leaders were disclosing personal information, and establishing a close,enlightened, and open image to people, showing charismatic leadership to the world.In the past, the image of Chinese leaders in the mass media tend to be modeled,charismatic leaders are covered by the stylized reports. It’s obvious that after 18 th National Congress of Communist Party of China, Chinese leaders have noticed the new media’s great influence as a spreading channel. How to expand the use of new media channels for political communication, strengthen transmission range and how to visualize and personalize the leaders’ image content, has become an important direction of consideration.It must be noted that the new media environment is difficult to be controlled, the effect is difficult to predict, and as a result those bring great challenge to the leaders’ ability to control the spread of information.Through several major events of image spreading on the new media, this paper clarify the status of national leader Xi Jinping’s image transmission, and at the same time analyze the effect of leader’s image communication on Sina microblog platform during the APEC, explore people’s expectations for the leader’s image as well as the spread of preferences for the image of the leader on new media, and the corresponding strategy that the traditional media can take when disseminating the leaders’ image in the new media environment.