Analysis of the Stereotype Formation Mechanism of Square Dance Damas in the We Media Era

Abstract

In the era of We Media, Square Dance Damas have been always constantly recognized as a negative image in many media reports. How is this negative stereotype Square Dance Damas constructed? This study, taking Square Dance Damas violently occupying the basketball court news as an example, combined with the agenda melding theory, analyzed what kind of impact of new frame generated by a flat discourse system in the We Media era may have on media value perception, and further discussed the Formation Mechanism of the Stereotype of Square Dance Damas in the We Media era. Introduction In recent years, various reports on Chinese Damas (elder female citizens) emerge in an endless stream. Especially when it comes to Square Dance Damas, it seems to repeatedly appear in the teeth of the storm of public attention, and caused a lot of controversies. The features of hot news over Chinese damas are classified and summarized by some media, dancing enthusiasm; selfishness and weak public awareness come at the top of the list [1]. In various media coverages, Square Dance Dama are described as savage and unreasonable, blindly impulse and even be lack of basic social common sense [2]. As a symbolic being, Square Dance Damas are labeled with multiple negative remarks. However, how was this kind of stereotype of Square Dance Dama formed anyway? Is there any connection between this stereotype’s formation mechanism and We Media? A Retrospect into the Event In 2017 June, a video clip over elder square dancers fighting with young basketball boys over the right to use the basketball field in Loyang Wangcheng Park went viral in the Internet, and swiftly become the center of public attention. In this event, it was not just the Square Dance Damas that got into the fight with those basketball boys, but there were many male senior citizens too. However, in the subsequent coverages, most media organizations chose to only use Square Dance Damas, and even the review published by Xinhua News Agency pinned their spearhead at those damas [3]. The Concept of We Media and Stereotype American IT column writer Dan Gillmor has written in his book published in 2004 July, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, that the blog stands for New Media 3.0. In his idea, 1.0 refers to traditional media or old media, while 2.0 refers to what has been recognized by mass public as new media, and 3.0 refers to We Media such as blogs [4]. In general, SNS or Apps such as WeChat, Weibo, Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram could be classified as We Media. One of the most significant features of We Media is that the users can be the viewer of media content as well as the generator (Users Generate Content, UGC). And due to the great user base of We Media, and its easy, flexible and all-time accessibility, the content of We Media has an unimaginable volume and updates promptly. The concept of stereotype was firstly introduced by American journalist Walter Lippman in his 4th International Conference on Social Science and Contemporary Humanity Development (SSCHD 2018) Copyright © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 281