Lili Ning







Balancing instrumental rationality and value rationality in communicating information: A study of the 'Nobel Older Brother' case

Guo Yingsen - referred to as the 'Nobel Older Brother' - provoked an intense discussion in the Chinese social media after the discovery of gravitational waves was announced on 11 February 2016. The controversy, which lasted for more than a month following that announcement, was about supporting a dream or opposing science. It also involved debates on the professional quality of and techniques for disseminating information. This entire episode demonstrated that in the desire to attract the audience's attention, the media's focus was on instrumental rationality. It also resulted in tarnishing the media's credibility and was condemned by public opinion. This pilot study shows that communicators can gain the trust of audiences and achieve good communication effects when they take a humanistic approach when reporting the facts - that is, when they give value rationality precedence over instrumental rationality

Keywords: value rationality, instrumental rationality, humanistic care, the facts, attention economy


References

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Note on the contributor

Lili Ning, a former journalist, is an associate professor at the Institute of Literature, Dali University; a doctoral candidate at the School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University, and a visiting scholar at the Institute of Communication Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. email: lilining001@gmail.com