The role of journalism in the development , growth and decline of Cultural Phenomena

By:Panda team(Nick Cao & Lucas Zhang& Hassan Zeinab & John Zheng )

When discussing the role of journalism in the development and growth of cultural phenomena, we must first clarify what cultural phenomena are and what are their main appearances.

 

The cultural phenomenon we are discussing today, I think, has existed since the emergence of human civilization, it can be the characteristics of food, clothing, housing, etc. I think it can reflect to a certain extent the degree of intelligence, lifestyle, etc. of the people at that time, and most importantly, it can show the direction of their cultural development, for the recent cultural phenomenon, it can know more information from it, such as the economic and political situation etc. For example, at the end of the 2nd millennium B.C., Syria entered the Iron Age. The Phoenicians, who lived in the central part of the eastern Mediterranean at that time, developed seafaring trade and promoted economic and cultural exchanges among the countries along the Mediterranean, and created the Phoenician script with 22 consonant alphabets, which made a great contribution to the world culture, and this reflects the cultural phenomenon of ancient Syria. We analyze religious culture as a special cultural phenomenon, such as the fusion of three Chinese sects - Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism - which reflects a new stage in the development of ancient Chinese philosophical thought.

 

Well, after we have a certain understanding of the cultural phenomenon, let's explore the origin of journalism. We need to find out when journalism had a fit with the cultural phenomena produced by human beings. According to Marx and Engels, man is a "social animal by nature. If we define journalism in terms of communication activities, then it can be traced back to the beginning of human social activities. But in the beginning, it was only possible to communicate by word of mouth or by pictographs carved on stone or animal bones. With the development of civilization, more and more carriers emerged, first newspapers and books, then with the development of technology, sound carriers, then television, computers and so on. In modern society, the convergence of media has also made the dissemination of news more convenient.

 

Here we can discuss the role of journalism in the rise and fall of cultural phenomena.

Let's take China as an example, we can see through the following five stages of Chinese journalism, from a backward agricultural country suffering from hardship and imperialist aggression. It has developed into a socialist republic with advanced ideas, a superior system and a happy people. This is also the process of development and growth of Chinese journalism in social phenomena. If we analyze the overall history, then the development of journalism in cultural phenomena is on an upward trend, but for a certain period of time, for example, the fall of the Manchu feudal government represents the fall of feudal cultural phenomena, which is also the fall of the ancient medium of information dissemination.

 

Let's take 1833 as the first point in time, before that the main communication medium for Chinese people was oral transmission and correspondence, which also determined the slow timeliness of news dissemination, a decree from the central government to the local government could take ten days or even months. It also reflected the cultural phenomenon of the agricultural society at that time. The competition mechanism was not sound, the pace of life was slow, and, consequently, social change was very slow. Journalism played a very small role in the development of cultural phenomena at this stage. However, Western journalistic concepts began to be introduced into China, and few journalistic papers appeared.

Let us take from 1895 to T1917 as the second time period. During this period, the Chinese press entered the era of "political press", and a large number of advanced intellectuals were engaged in pen politics at that time, and more journalism papers appeared, which explored and discussed certain journalism theoretical issues from different angles and sides, especially the issue of the role of the press; in journalism practice, the formation of Liang Qichao and others' newspaper "new style", which raised people's interest in newsprint and promoted the improvement of editorial techniques. The development of journalism also led to the development of cultural phenomena. This phase in China was also around the time of the Xinhai Revolution, when Sun Yat-sen, the father of the nation, led the revolutionaries to overthrow the Manchu feudal government.

We take 1918-1941 as the third stage. During the May Fourth New Culture Movement, Chinese journalism entered a stage of systematic research, university journalism education began, and the first journalistic works and journalists emerged. Go Gongzhen's History of Chinese Journalism is a masterpiece of this stage. On the whole, journalism at this stage was mainly introduced from the United States, and the Chinese press attached more importance to journalistic practice and less interest in theoretical research, and university journalism education generally focused on the study and training of journalistic business.

 

The fourth stage was the period of establishment of proletarian journalism (1942-1976). During the Yan'an Rectification Period of the Chinese Communist Party, proletarian journalism began to take shape, and a large number of essays, editorials and speeches of leaders on journalism appeared. By the end of the Rectification, the Party's view of journalism had been systematically established. This theoretical system served the central work of the Party - the revolutionary war - and played a great role. After liberation, this theory was summarized and enriched, but it was also influenced by the "leftist" line, and by the "Cultural Revolution", journalism existed in name only.

 

The fifth stage was the period of establishing socialist journalism with Chinese characteristics from 1977 to now, starting from the rectification of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese journalism entered a new period of development centering on economic construction, forming a peak period of journalism research, with more than 1,000 books and dozens of journalism books published. More than 1,000 journalism books and dozens of journalism journals were published, and the object of study was expanded to include human information transmission behavior. In terms of journalism practice, journalism reform was gradually implemented from 1979 to accommodate the shift from class struggle as the program to economic construction as the center.

Decline

In the process of cultural development, journalism plays a very important historical role. Culture is a relatively stable ideological and behavioural tendency that gradually accumulates and forms in the process of social development. The General Press Conference mobilises all forces to record the changes of society, so all cultural phenomena with the characteristics of the times will be reproduced and precipitated through news information. Cultural accumulation can be realised in many ways, and news is the most comprehensive and effective way. News and cultural phenomena are complementary and mutually affect each other.

 

From the perspective of decline, the proliferation of pan-entertainment news is an example of the decline of news in cultural phenomena. In China, according to Xinhuanet, entertainment news accounts for as much as 43% of socially concerned news, and this kind of entertainment news is generally presented in a skinned form. Massive fragments of entertainment information, on the surface, give us life entertainment, but in fact, reading is becoming more and more fragmented. The flood of entertainment information is only harmful to our social life. As early as decades ago, communication scholars Lazarsfield and Merton proposed the "anaesthesia function" of the media. Taking advantage of the complicated information and colourful content of the mass media, the limited leisure time of the public is occupied in large numbers, resulting in people's alienation from many traditional social relations, leaving them no time to actively participate in social activities, and weakening people's ability to move. We are wrapped in the information cocoon room and fed by the system. What we know best is the message push clicked on the screen again and again, and the search engine knows what we need best. Our lives are filled with 15 seconds of new media entertainment lace news, novelty, exaggerated, pornographic and vulgar entertainment information. This is a kind of decline. In his Entertainment to Death, Neil Potsman once stated that when the content of politics, religion, education, sports, business and any other public sphere is increasingly appearing in an entertaining way and becoming a cultural spirit, and human beings silently become the vassal of entertainment without complaining or even willing. As a result, we have become a species of entertainment to death. Entertainment news erodes the mind, which is a manifestation of the decline of cultural phenomena.

 

We say that today's news is tomorrow's history, and future generations always look for the cultural traces of that year from history. Imagine that when our news today is written in exaggerated, novelty and other ways, the report is full of the personal gossip life of the entertainment star. Will there be such cultural development such as writing and papermaking in the future? In a way, it is a kind of decline.