Media Criticism - Avant-garde Criticism in the 21st Century (Volume 2): Flaws on the spine or cover

Author: Jiang Yuanlun, Zhang Ning / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: Media Criticism is an academic publication dedicated to researching and critiquing various mass media. It provides a platform for evaluative discourse on contemporary media and the exchange of new academic insights. The theme articles in this issue focus on blogs. Blogs are so popular that even 100 critical articles wouldn’t be enough to satiate the demand. The four articles published here are just a drop in the bucket. The other articles in this issue cover a broader range of topics than the previous one, discussing both the portrayal of neurotic female characters in contemporary films and the phenomenon of "classic reinterpretations" like A Chinese Odyssey Part Two: Cinderella. They also interpret Chinese women’s magazines, analyze online emotionalism, focus on Very You and Me, and critique the trend of "declassicization" in contemporary culture. We have indeed entered a new "media age." Media Criticism (founded in July 2005) is an academic publication dedicated to researching and critiquing various mass media, planned to be published twice a year. It provides a platform for evaluative discourse on contemporary media and the exchange of new academic insights for university faculty and students, researchers in research institutions, and professionals in mass media (such as newspapers, television, and the internet). The content columns of this publication include: Core Topics, Icon Critique, New Media, Object Systems, Contemporary Spaces, and Western Classics. Even so, compared to traditional media, blogs also have certain shortcomings in ensuring the objectivity and comprehensiveness of news. After all, blogs are a form of grassroots culture, and their folk nature is self-evident. No one can expect bloggers to possess professional journalistic skills or ethical standards. As ordinary people, they can only share their observations, experiences, and feelings, and they may not have the obligation or ability to investigate the entire event comprehensively. Moreover, no one has the right to demand that they must be objective, comprehensive, or even fair when disseminating breaking news. For this reason, their news value is significantly diminished, and at most, they can only provide timely, limited, and personalized information sources. These information sources are certainly important for the survival of ordinary people. One reason is that any traditional media must be constrained by various rules and implicit rules, specific systems and values, and even social influence. In other words, it is a very typical institutionalized cultural product, where no journalist or editor can freely express their opinions or choose how to publish all the information. Blogs, on the other hand, address this shortcoming. They rely on the consensual ethics of individuals as social beings, allowing bloggers to freely and promptly select the information they know without considering various social power dynamics. At the same time, they can supplement various news and their value significance from multiple perspectives through online communication. As a symbol of the popularization of social right to know, I don’t think blogs have a brilliant or promising future in news dissemination. This "reporting news" by anyone can at most be seen as a part-time job for bloggers, who are essentially waiting for opportunities. In essence, blogs are still dedicated to personal emotions and thoughts. Of course, if all bloggers were to promptly capture news in a "wait-and-see" manner, their collective power would undoubtedly be significant for relatively limited traditional media—even so, blogs are far from being capable of becoming the gravediggers of traditional media. From another perspective, since the internet emerged, traditional print media have actually been in a precarious situation. Every new feature developed on the internet has been embraced by all netizens for its humanistic purpose, especially its global integration in terms of time, which gives traditional print media no advantage at all. Therefore, if we consider the core crisis of traditional media, the internet is the true gravedigger of traditional media. As for when it will personally bury its rival, it depends on the speed at which it digs the grave. The rise of blogs has merely added another shovelful to the internet’s efforts to bury traditional media. P9