论晚明的图书传播对社会舆论的影响

On the Influence of the Dissemination of Books on Public Opinion in Late Ming Dynasty

在晚明血缘、地缘、阶层的限制被不断打破,社会流动性不断扩大的趋势下,图书出版业繁荣,人们对于阅读有强烈的需求,读者群体不断扩大。在这种庞大的信息载体、信息传播者与受众群体的共同作用下,图书成为了信息传播的重要途径与工具,围绕图书的编写、流传和阅读,晚明社会形成了前所未有的信息传播网。相较于传统的经史子集,较为另类的时事小说、官员编书、妖书等几种图书形式更能体现当时舆论与社会的互动关系,见证并推动了晚明一系列重大事件的发展。

Towards the Late Ming Dynasty, public opinion became fairly active with the development of commerce, the acceleration of population mobility, and the declining censorship, many a free proletarian moving into the city to take part in the commercial activities, enlarging the number of citizens and enriching the subject and the audience of the public opinion. The rapid increase of cities and non-agriculture population expanded the space for the dissemination of public opinion. The interaction between and among the political, economic, and cultural elements in the process of the dissemination then carried the development of public opinion into a new historical phase. As the limits upon the social division, population movement, and class position were all broken through during its late period, the society of Ming Dynasty became increasingly mobile, which in turn brought about greater demand for reading and larger readership, thus leading to the prosperity of the book publishing trade. As a result, the combined action of the mass medium, message senders and receivers made books the chief approach and instrument of the information dissemination. Centered upon the compiling, circulating, and reading of the books, an unprecedented network of information dissemination took shape. Comparing with the Confucian classics, some ＂weird＂ books like the current-event fiction, official-compiled book, and evil book better reflected the interaction between the public opinion and the society, witnessing and promoting the progress of a series of major social events in Irate Ming Dynasty.