At present, there is a bad phenomenon in the study of journalism and communication. The research of primitive category develops slowly, but many marginal fields are expanding. If we can study solid results, there are not many real innovations. All the works named "newest", "advanced" and "core" are almost nothing new and advanced, so it is impossible not to read them. This trend is also manifested in graduate students. There was a little spark of thought, but when it was hyped, it became a complete bubble. In recent years, the research on network has exploded. Although some achievements have been made, there are too many bubbles. IT industry's amazing foresight, over-perfect imagination and advertisements have replaced serious research, and popularization of knowledge has been promoted to academic research. In view of this situation, I think deepening the study of journalism and communication is the innovation of our discipline. Innovation lies in deepening research, not in adding several "knowledge" and new terms to statistics.
As far as journalism is concerned, the basic categories of original theoretical research, such as news, news value, objectivity, news truth, the role of news media, news law, news professional ethics and so on. It has been mentioned in some papers, but the articles in this field are decreasing year by year, as if there is nothing to say. Even the new news theory textbooks published at the turn of the century, although trying to supplement some new things, are not many. The reason is that our systematic research on traditional news theory can't keep up. Some new research fields have indeed achieved results, but there are also many "studies" in this field. Whether it can be established is debatable, but the concept of "new is good" (this word has never been said) has been deeply rooted in people's hearts, so whatever! The result is nothing more than reassembling news common sense.
To deepen journalism, we should not only study new problems and phenomena, but also put the study of basic categories in a more important position. Although the number of articles in this field has decreased in recent years, most of them are analyzed from the perspective of publication. Because the articles are scattered and the publication time is not concentrated, it has not attracted widespread attention in academic circles. If we make a comprehensive investigation one by one, we can put forward a lot of in-depth thinking. News truthfulness, for example, has been summarized by the industry as a metaphor that "truth is the life of news", and now it has almost become a cliche. It is unforgivable if the academic circle also stays at the level of learning by metaphor. If the academic circles keep the authenticity of news according to the requirements of "reporting people, events and opinions, not only accurate and reliable in words and details, but also taking facts as the criterion for the reasons and explanations of facts", it is not research. News authenticity is related to timeliness, journalists' cognitive ability and personal views, media system and news operation mode, current political and cultural atmosphere, national traditions, religious beliefs and ideologies, and misreading of news sources and audiences. True and false judgment is also closely related to value judgment and interest relationship. These are by no means one or two metaphors, such as the positive metaphor of "life" or the negative metaphor of "demonization". If every basic category of journalism can have a few monographs that are really studied in depth, then our journalism theory textbook can really tell a few insights in the chapter of "News Truth".
We have plowed the ground of news theory many times now. What we lack is to dig down at a certain point on the ground, dig a well, spray water and then spread it in all directions. Looking at old problems from a new perspective requires creative thinking, which is a sign of discipline progress.
Seeing through our common news phenomenon is innovation. For example, why is news qualitative and ritualized? Let's study the ever-changing news content and the basically unchanged reporting mode. Think about it carefully, it turns out that what it gives people is not something new, but its essence is to constantly strengthen our established views on the world and life. This is caused by the standardization of modern news production organizations. However, under different countries and ideologies, this standardization has different manifestations. In this regard, only a few articles have talked about it, and further research has not been put on the agenda.
Wen Wei Po published an article "Snobbish News" on July 8th last year (Zhang Jinling). From the perspective of respecting human rights, the media were criticized for reporting that a wall fell down and killed three migrant workers in only a few dozen words, while half a page reported that a returnee doctor was beaten in Shenzhen. On August 24, another article in the newspaper, News Eye is not a snob (Zhou), defended the normal reporting of the media with the basic concept of news value. In fact, this issue can be a starting point for deepening the study of news value.
With regard to the deepening of communication, apart from introducing the latest research results in time, the focus is also on studying the existing basic categories of communication. There are two aspects that I think should be deepened:
First of all, by deepening the research, people can get the methods and perspectives of this theory, this model or that model. We pay too little attention to the research process, and there are few translations in this field, but there are many teaching materials. Of course, this kind of book has a great impetus, but it also brings an unexpected bad consequence, that is, everyone is exposed to the conclusion, and how to draw the conclusion is unclear, which will of course underestimate the research process. It is enough for college students to know the conclusion, but just knowing the conclusion is not conducive to the formation of the habit of theoretical thinking for graduate students. At present, a number of classic works on communication are being translated, which, I think, may play a role in changing the process of people attaching importance to conclusions and neglecting conclusions.
Secondly, it focuses on various hypotheses that have been recognized by most western communication scholars and to what extent they can be applied to our environment. It is fallacious to take one more step in truth, not to mention that all kinds of "models" and "theories" of communication are theoretical assumptions, not to mention that truth is untrue. The structure of quite a few of our articles is like this: what a certain communication "theory" said, and then based on it, we discussed what problems existed in China's mass communication and what we should do, and seldom considered the differences between the environment and background assumed by these theories and China.
For example, the commonly used "agenda setting theory" is based on the fact that various news media can freely report any topic and choose the environmental background of reporting facts according to their own value judgment, so the agenda setting of the media is an objective result, and the public also has more horizontal information comparison. If the agenda setting of the media is unnatural to a great extent, and the public can only see one kind of information source, while the other kind of information source is blocked, then analyzing the agenda setting of the media in this case according to some arguments drawn by others in that environment requires many conditions to limit the conclusion. It would be quite tragic to use an objective hypothesis of observing the characteristics of media activities for subjective propaganda purposes.
Another example is the "spiral theory of silence", which truly illustrates some public opinion phenomena in mass communication. According to this theory, there is a difference between liberalism and fascism in propaganda. Elizabeth Noel-Neumann, who put forward this theory, participated in the activities of the Nazi Party, and her theory contained elements of summing up Nazi experience. After this background of the author was exposed, it caused great shock in the communication field. It should be acknowledged that she has contributed to the study of communication-public opinion, but it should also be pointed out that her theory contains elements that exclude minority opinions. For Germany with Nazi propaganda experience and China with Cultural Revolution propaganda experience, people need to be especially vigilant to prevent this theory from being applied to Goebbels' propaganda. There are ethical problems in guiding public opinion, and fooling public opinion will eventually be punished.
As far as what needs to be done at present is concerned, I feel that relatively new communication research achievements need to be popularized as soon as possible. On the basis of popularization, we should consider how to learn from them in the environment of China, such as "the theory of third-party communication effect" and "the theory of agenda integration".
As far as specific research topics are concerned, such as "health communication" has just started in China. At present, I have only seen one article, hoping to become a topic of more or less concern in communication under the new situation. Research topics such as health communication, mass communication and children, mass communication and gender are universal. Now the latter two topics have achieved high-level research results in China, but they have not received extensive attention in the field of communication. China has the largest population in the world, and China's communication studies are going global. The research of these topics may make great contributions to mankind and attract the attention of the world. However, due to various reasons, we can't compete with others in the world in the research of basic theories. In view of this situation, I think communication research can be divided into two activity spaces. One is to strengthen the basic theoretical research of communication in China, which is the basis for improving our overall research level; One is to strengthen the research on specific topics that can be talked with the world, such as the topic of global common concern just mentioned.
For a long time, people have been expecting that China's communication studies can produce some "theories" or "models". However, academic research is not the production of industrial products, and research needs a relatively pure experimental environment, which we lack. Therefore, we might as well sum up some communication experiences that respect the characteristics of news as much as possible. Through specific quantitative investigation, we can get some media development trends and audience characteristics under China's system, but it is difficult to study many theoretical assumptions with universal communication phenomena.
At present, the critical school of communication studies in China has made great progress, which is gratifying. I just want to remind you that the object of profound thinking of European and American critical schools is the problems faced by the over-mature development of capitalist market economy; China's socialist market economy is in its infancy, and their thoughts have great enlightenment to us, but they are not suitable for directly criticizing this and that. Generally speaking, the development of mass media in China is not that there are too many elements in the market economy, but that it is not enough. Based on the market-oriented construction of mass communication industry (including the construction of rule of law and professional ethics), supplemented by criticism, the focus should not be biased. However, China's research on news communication lacks the philosophy, political economy and historical and cultural research methods of critical school. Now we have more articles on simple logical reasoning, and less things that give people profound thoughts. China's traditional practical rational thinking, which expresses truth in words and stresses reality, is very popular now. We do need some analytical articles in this field, but not all of them. Especially the current market economy, it needs critical thinking methods to balance it.
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