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Pie 4.2 Proportions of referring expressions in the news about older people (Guangming) 10
Line chart 4.1 Frequencies of words and phrases categories in the news of older people 10
1 Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Our country has stepped into the accelerating aging society (Li Bing, et al., 2005), which has brought challenges from all aspects. These challenges and problems include the imbalanced regional aging increase, the high proportion of the disabled elderly, empty nesters and the elderly with economic difficulties and the imperfect social security system. To solve or perfect these population aging phenomena, newspaper presses are always associated with the methods due to their orientation for public opinion (Zeng Qingxiang, et al., 2005). This media platform describes the elderly with particular characteristics and attributes, which plays an important role in constructing the image of the elderly.
1.2 Research Object
“Yangtse Evening News” and “Guangming Daily” are chosen as the representatives of local newspapers and the official newspaper respectively. This study deals with the characteristics of aging identities in the two newspaper texts describing old people and collects expressions concerning the features of the elderly simultaneously so as to point out the features of the elderly in news reports and the advantages and disadvantages of some descriptions.
1.3 Layout of the Thesis
In Chapter 2, the literature studies on aging people in media discourse and discourse studies on identities are researched to find out the current achievements and shortcomings. Chapter 3 is about the data collection and data analysis, which shows how this study is conducted. In Chapter 4, with some examples, the statistics will be explained in detail and be used to compare the local news reports and the official news reports. In the conclusion part, the findings in Chapter 4 will all be concluded. What's more the implication and limitation of this study will be mentioned.
2 Literature Review
2.1 Studies on Aging People in Media Discourse
Nowadays, more and more discussions and controversies resulting from news reports point to the neglection of the vulnerable groups. There are a number of essays about the images of the vulnerable groups. Zou (2008) holds the opinion that the voice for women in news is seldom seen. Li (2009) points out the lack of information supply for the disadvantaged groups from the media. Besides, reports concerning these groups are not penetrating and powerful. Sometimes discrimination and nasty sensationalization of these groups appear in news, which should be considered seriously by both the media and the public. From the perspective of symbolic capital, Yuan (2011) regards the mass media as an important platform for the migrant workers to integrating into the city life by overcoming the symbolic barriers. Tang (2012) holds that the identity construction of vulnerable groups in news discourse covers age, gender, profession, and residence.
The elderly also belong to the vulnerable groups. There have been many essays about the labeled images of the elderly in recent years. Fealy (2012) finds that old people are always constructed as victims in news reports. With the solutions accordingly, Guo (2014) analyzes the news of the elderly falling down and concluded their process of constructing the labeled aging identities such as extorting, which misled the public to deal with the similar circumstance under an illusion. Liu (2014) holds the opinion that the media should not shirk the responsibilities of label immobilization and the barriers among groups and must take the negative effects of their reports into consideration. Shen (2014) borrows the term of "Laonianpiao"( A group of old people leave their hometowns to take care of their offspring working or studying away from home out of worries) from "China Youth Daily" to analyze the process and influence of constructing images of city "Laonianpiao" in news reports and offer some solving methods.