Research on the Stiff Function of Network Media Taking Network Media Reports on Male Teachers as Examples

In order to research on the stiff function of network media, this paper selects a special group-male teachers as research objects, analyzes comprehensively from the perspective of communication science, summarizes how the image of this group is set up in network media and what kind of communication effect is generated, and makes suggestions, which are expected to be beneficial for network media to exert effective function in public opinion supervision.

Lippmann, American politician and journalist, pointed out in Public Opinion that media has a special function.It adopts a fixed mode in reporting certain group or event chronically.Therefore, "stiff impression" on this group or event, that is, a kind of simple and stiffened opinion, will be generated among the message receivers (the public).Although the media has realized this defect in their reports, they could not avoid it in their practices.After all, to attract the public's attention is the basic rule for media's survival.The public is also aware of such defect.However, they become accustomed to the media's "hypnosis".Therefore, this function of media becomes an important way to teach the public.
Such phenomenon also appears in traditional media whilst it is more obvious in network media.In network communication, because the supervision power is not so good as that in traditional medias, plus the weakness of occupation morality in workers of net websites, the communication of network tends to cater for the public's interest, resulting that the hit rates of news on violence, eroticism and quaintness are very high whilst no one cares about news on heroic and righteous events.What is important is that in media tools that could teach the public, the influence of network media is becoming more and more significant.In Netizens, the number of teenagers is growing.The capacity of teenagers to distinguish right from wrong is quite week, therefore, they will be easily influenced by medias.As a worker in education, the author opines that it is of significant meanings to pay attention to the education function of network media.Therefore, the network media becomes the research object of the author.
In order to explore how strong the stiff function of network media is, the author made statistics on the reports on male teachers made by network media.The reason to choose this group is as follows: in recent years, most of the reports on male teachers made by networks are negative reports.In those reports, the male teachers are either the animals who rape the young girls or a whited sepulchers under despise, whose behaviors bring about very bad social influence.As the engineers of human beings souls, the negative images of teachers will generate certain influence on the psychology of teenagers.Therefore, the author believes that male teachers could represent certain things.
The statistics method of this paper is: after insert "male teachers" into Google, 125 messages are available (the overlapped news are not counted in).The author analyzed the contents of the news, divided the news according to their styles, and analyzed the nature of the report according to the contents, that is, what the image of the male teacher is, positive, negative or neutral.And then, the author figured out the sources of the reports, from transitional media or network media, so as to analyze the difference and similarity of the stiff function of traditional media and network media.At last, the author made statistics on relevant comments on those reports to analyze the communication effect of those reports.
The time the statistics was made is from 25 to 28 April 2008.The statistics objects are news reports on male teachers from 2001 to 2008.The research methodology is content analysis.
The statistical analysis result is that in the 125 news report, the images of male teachers are divided into 9 types.
The amount of reports on male teachers in network media which sets up neural images is the biggest.Negative image ranks the second and positive image the least.Let us leave alone the neural reports (the netizens may not pay attention to this type of reports) and compare the positive reports with negative reports.The negative report is 3 times that of positive reports.The netizens are easily attracted to negative reports.Therefore, the images of male teachers set up by network media make citizens tend to generate stiff impression that male teachers are animals, abnormal persons and demons.Reports of this nature include two images: hero type and ideal type.In reports of hero type, male teachers rescue others and have selfless images.In reports of ideal reports, male teachers are morality models who have good teaching style and morality (please refer to table 2).The theme of such reports is to resound through the good characteristics of male teachers and to establish "hero" and "model" images for male teachers, who set good examples for the public.However, because the description of the characters in the reports is not clear enough, the character image is quite weak and has no strong influence effect, which will not leave deep impression on readers (please refer to table 2).
Table 2. Positive reports on male teachers Type Headline 1. Elementary school male teacher saves child dropped into water 2. The influence of "male teachers" on the non-intelligence element development of children-explore community education 3. A male teacher in the countryside of Zhaoqing is to become the first person in Guangdong province who donates kidney to non-family members Hero type 4. A male teacher saves 32 students in the flood but lost 7 family members 1.A male teacher, unwilling to be common 2. Celebrating Women's Day, male teachers hold love umbrella for female teachers 3. A male teacher has been staying in countryside elementary schools from 24 years, only 13 students in the entire school 4. Xiangtan University Event: bold and unconstrained male teachers and graceful and restrained female professor 5. Zang Jinlong, a male teacher in a kindergarten 6. Ren Yuanhui, a teacher in No.66 middle high school wins "the most charming male teacher prize" 7. Countryside male teacher (essay) 8. 7 reasons for marrying elementary school male teachers 9. Male teacher shall become the big trees and female teachers mothers 10.Countryside male teacher (poem) 11. 18 male teachers take initiative to shoulder the work of 100 female teachers Ideal type 12.A male teacher, who have been teaching for 38 years, still cares about his student when he is terribly ill

Negative images
Reports of this nature include three images: animal type, abnormality type and local tyrant type.Firstly, in animal type reports, male teachers are all animals-like who rape young girls (female students).In the reports, male teachers are licentious, without morality and sense of honor, heartless and punished by laws.Secondly, in abnormality type reports, male teachers have exhibitionism, addiction to wired clothes, and addiction to peeping, homoerotism and are transgender persons.They have strange personality or dress up weirdly.Even if the words are not so attractive, the novel contents could attract people's attention.In local tyrant type reports, male teachers are either killers of sadism.Because many are criminal cases and there pictures too, such reports really attract people's mind (please refer to table 3).
Table 3. Negative reports on male teachers Type Headline 1. Male teacher lured 14-year-old girl to cohabit in the name of "makeup missed lessons" 2. Volunteer male teacher disclosures unethical love with high-school-freshmen girl online 3. Beijing male teacher fondled the breasts of more than 10 girls in public during teaching 4. Changchun groping male teacher has molested pupils for more than two years 5. Strange teacher and student -the love and resentment between prostitute girl and her former male teacher 6. Lonely holiday of male teacher and girl student 7. 57-year-old male teacher rape-and-killed girl student and discard the body in wilderness six months ago 8. 20-year-old school beauty cohabited with married male teacher and suffered repeated abortions 9. Do all male teachers have "Erotomania Gene"? 10.Unmoral fortyish male teacher molested several girl pupils 11.For molesting and raping 11 young girls, a Sichuan "groping" male teacher gets suspended death penalty 12. Male teacher's impulsive passion deviant gets costly pay 13. Hong Kong 52-year-old male teacher had sex with 11-year-old girl student 14. 14-year-old girl shows up after "missing " with a male teacher, pregnant with his child 15.Male teacher molested 4-year-old girl, angry parents called police 16.Male teachers are banned to teach girl students in New Delhi primary schools for too many sexual harassment cases 17.Gansu high school male teacher got death penalty for raping 18 girl students 18. Emasculation surgical for all the male teachers 19.Primary school male teacher molested 4 girl students in name of learning the human body Animal type 20.Dr. male teacher beats girlfriend and claims that the relationship is for sympathy 1. college male teacher shows his half-naked photos online 2. Help!Male gym teacher asked me to take off jacket and do 50 push-ups under his dirty look 3. Aspects of oversea education: Why there are few male teachers in American schools 4. Overseas returnee college male teacher was detained because of naked chat on internet 5. Like: chapter 25 of the absurd autobiography of teacher -male teacher becomes a female teacher and female teacher becomes abnormal teacher 6.Male teacher punishes girl student to drink wine and one girl student went alcoholism and wash her stomach 7. College female teacher screams in the morning because of other's peeping and she doubts that it may be done by a male teacher 8. Dressed un in female dress and with condom on the bed, a mid-aged male teacher died weirdly 9. College male teacher sends message to ply with college girl students 10.College male teachers chat nakedly and mid-aged white collar become the main group in naked chat 11.A girl student said that she was sexual harassed by a male teacher and publisher the teacher's phone number on the internet 12.A Japanese male teacher was accused of harassing girl students 13.In order to take part in "super girl contest", a male teacher decides to change his gender 14.A Taiwan male teacher finds a female police as his girlfriend through internet chat 15.A Norway male teacher went through denaturalization operation in Christmas and will go back to teacher in his original school 16.A young male teacher is addicted to hair and the doctor said that his psychology is normal 17.Singapore: Lifish School male teacher announces his gay identity in his blog 18.A Japanese elementary male teacher took 600 filthy photos of young females Abnormality type 19.A 71 year old American male teacher changes his gender and the parents worry that their children will be confused in gender 1. News! Male teacher beats female teacher 2. The abnormal love between a male teacher and his 12 years old student 3.A male teacher hurt 3 teachers with knife and then committed suicide 4. A male teacher hurt 3 teachers with knife 5.A male teacher took his internet lover by throat and was sentenced to stay of execution 6.Because of the inappropriate education methods of kindergarten male teachers, the child was very scared and twitching 7. Before black out, a drunk male teacher rushed into girl students' dorm 8. Female teacher resigned because of sexual harassment by male teachers 9. Female student murdered by male teacher in class 10.A male teacher moved into girl students' apartment and caused many troubles Criminal Type 11.A male teacher chops at his father at night and chopped off his father's head and burnt

Neutral images
Reports of this nature account for a large portion in statistical data.However, because the character images in these reports do not have any emotional features, they do not attract netizens' mind although they are large in number (almost without any comment).Reports of this type include four images: romantic type, sunny type, weak type and blurry type.Romantic type mainly describes love affairs between teachers and students and does not comment on the male teachers.Sunny type reports the demand of kindergarten on young male teachers.Weak type reports are mainly about the poor male teachers who are weak in economic and social status and could not find wives, or about teachers who are mocked and made games of by students, or have sexual function obstacles, or are gays who are blackmailed.In all, weak type reports create an image of poor teachers.Blurry type is about male teachers who do not show love and hate emotions.
Even though in some articles there should be certain encouragement/debasing emotion, because the wrong writing methods of the author, the male teachers' images in the reports are not prominent (please refer to Table 4).
Table 4. Neutral reports on male teachers Type Headlines 1.A girl college student died in her teacher of high school, a male teacher 2. Diction of a male teacher: the love between me and my student in 13 years 3.A male teacher of Chongqing sent altogether 7000 messages and won his loved 4. The underground love with a married male college teacher 5.I successfully turned the most handsome male teacher into my boyfriend 6.A male teacher, 33 elder than me, expressed his love of me 7. Fall in love with a male teacher Romantic type 8.A senior college student from Chengdu becomes the bride to her male teacher of the college: I am very lucky 1. "oversea returnee" becomes a teacher in kindergarten: young, handsome and versatile 2. Kindergarten education is in urgent need of manly male teachers 3. Kindergarten also needs sunny teachers, male postgraduates send their resumes 4. The amount of male teachers in China's kindergarten is growing Sunny type 5.A male teacher joins Nanjing Gulou Kindergarten and he feels good about the job 1. Women should not marry male teachers 2. It is difficult for elementary school male teachers to marry; they compete in housework contest where they handle diapers and prick for girls 3. The troubles of male teachers 4. A male teacher, born to be asexual, wants a wife of love but without sex 5. Elementary school male teachers are also weak group 6.Hong Kong: a teenager nicknamed "duckbill" was convicted of great crime because of blackmailing a gay male teacher 7. Finding wives -the pains of countryside elementary and junior high school male teachers 8.The male teacher is asexual and his wife could not bear the loneliness and find others 9. Naughty girl student molests her male teacher 10.On Teachers' Day, to resolve the problems of male teachers 11.Male teachers in kindergarten 12. Shenyang: a junior high school male teacher was beaten by his student 13.The love of male teachers: love does not fall without a house 14.Female teachers in kindergarten account for 99.5% and it is hard to find male aunts 15.Elementary schools are looking forward to the joining of male teachers 16.Male teacher: actually, I am not tired at all Weak type 17.The most beautiful countryside female teacher and the ugliest countryside male teacher 18. Occupation warning: male teacher was convicted one year sentence because of supplying adult novels 19.Monthly salary being RMB700, why could not kindergartens keep their male teachers?20.Male teachers in the eyes of female teachers 21.Aiping Chen: strategy for creating cultural survival environment for kindergarten male teachers 22.The plaint of a male teacher in Shenzhen 23.A quarrel and abuse between a girl college student and her male teacher 1. Jiading District: male teacher club 2. The unique card of male teachers 3. The pictures of the youngest male teacher in HangZhou countryside are published 4. A 66 year old male teacher died naked with his girl student 5.The bosom of a male teacher is as bosomy as adult female's 6.All male teachers of Handan elementary school "peel" the winter cloth of tress 7. The percentage of male teachers in Shanghai elementary schools keeps decreasing, "female country" is keen for male teachers 8.The trouble of college male teachers: too many girl students send messages to me 9.Because there are only a few male teachers, students go bad 10.The ratio of male and female teachers is unbalanced, could male teachers teach boy students to be manly?
11. Girl students are dissatisfied with the male teachers' checking of their dorms at night, the school consider this the normal work 12. Huang Jianxiang turns into countryside PE male teacher and teaches children to play football by talking 13.Dispute arising out of stopping study and fee re-imbursement; male teacher beats a female parent 14.Faked works of stream of consciousness(Eight) the zippers of male teachers are the same as those of others 15.The employment condition of elementary school male teachers and male nurse is good, boys should not have prejudice when choosing specialties 16.The sub-health tends to appear in younger male teachers 17.Foshan: elementary school male teachers become "hot" 18.How to cultivate male teachers for kindergarten 19.The data of Qingdao indicate: in elementary school teachers, male teachers only account for one percent 20.The hair style of a male teacher influences his teaching quality, the male teacher therefore cut his hair so as to change his image 21.The death of a 36 year old male teacher in Dongyang sounds the alarm, when you heart feels abnormal, please remember to go to hospital soonest 22.The excellent capacity of a male teacher on drawing rounds Blurry type 23.Girl student nailed male teachers

Analysis on report style
As is well known, correspondence and comment are long, suitable for description of details and expressing feelings.Therefore, in reports on positive characters, hero and models, such styles are adopted so as to achieve a better public negative news.(please refer to table 7).

Summary and suggestion
It could be seen from the above statistical data that in reports made by network media on male teachers, the amount of negative reports are far more than that of positive reports.The communication effect already generated could prove the mightiness of the stiff function of network media.It must be pointed out that firstly network media shall have be under the direction of right public opinion supervision and shall follow certain rules in deciding the amount of positive and negative reports.Secondly, the character images in positive reports shall be described as lively and vividly as possible, where communication and comments style shall be adopted.In negative reports, the character images shall not be too clear and the details of their crimes should not be described in too clear ways, where short message style shall be used.Such suggestion is also suitable for traditional media.At last, it could be concluded from relevant comments of the reports that the netizens have strong mood to seek novelty and quaintness.The net websites could set up limit for the comments on negative reports.For example, the column of comments will automatically close when the comments reach 100 pieces.

Table 1 .
Analysis of the male teacher image in network reports