人民代表大会制度是我国的根本政治制度，人大代表肩负着民主沟通的重大使命，直接关系到人大工作的成效以及民主政治的进程。党的十八大以来，新的形势和任务对各级人大代表依法履职、提高履职能力提出了更高的要求。在这一背景下，对全国人大代表的功能和履职情况进行研究，描绘全国人大代表的形象，对照制度设计查找差异点、确定亟需完善的薄弱环节，对推动人大制度和人大工作与时俱进、完善发展具有极高的现实意义。 囿于当前公开资料的局限，现有研究更多是从理论、局部进行描述性的研究，本研究通过数据和研究方法的创新，选择自全国人大成立以来《人民日报》上与全国人大代表履职强相关的3158篇报道为研究对象，通过文本分析和数据统计分析，对全国人大代表的形象、功能和履职情况进行全景式的考察，重点研究全国人大代表实际履职与制度设计的差异。本文还使用第三方舆情检索工具对2019年全网相关报道进行检索，采用相同方法进行统计分析，从不同信息渠道对本文研究成果进行对比验证，两者分析结果总体一致。 本文主要发现如下：第一，全国人大代表官方媒体形象几近完人，符合制度设计上作为各行业楷模的定位；第二，全国人大代表在完成宪法和法律赋予的职责之外，实践中还有支持和宣传党和国家决策的功能；第三，全国人大代表履职行为与代表构成存在较大偏差，精英倾向较重，公职人员、各类社会组织负责人、知识分子是代表履职的主力；第四，全国人大代表在进行民意表达时，更倾向于职业角度，地域影响较小。 本文从《人民日报》的相关报道切入，保持了研究的一致性，以全覆盖、长时期跨度、大数量样本定量分析的方式，对全国人大代表建国以来的形象、功能和履职情况进行了研究，对照制度设计寻找差异与薄弱点，为改善全国人大代表工作提供了支持。提出政策建议：推动信息公开工作；充分利用互联网和信息技术，建立全国统一平台，激励全国人大代表积极履职；优化代表结构，加强履职培训，增强代表履职能力；加强人大机关工作队伍建设。

The National People’s Congress （hereafter referred to as NPC） system is the fundamental political system of China. NPC Deputies are dedicated to the important mission of democratic communication which has direct influence upon the effectiveness of the NPC work and also the progress of China’s democratic politics. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the new situation and new tasks facing us demand higher requirements for NPC deputies at all levels to exercise power in accordance with the law and improve their capacity to perform duty. Under such circumstances, this paper initiates a study of the image, function and power exercise performance of the NPC deputies, aiming to locate the differences and weak links which to be improved in contrast to the original system design. The result of the study will demonstrate high practical significance to promote the development and improvement of the NPC system and the NPC work.Most of extant researches are conducted in theoretical analysis or partial descriptions because of the limitation of publicly accessible materials. Based on the methodological innovation, this thesis takes as its subject 3158 reports from People’s Daily, and they are all related to the power exercise of NPC deputies since the establishment of the NPC. Adopting the textual and data analysis, the thesis lauches an overall investigation to the image, function and power exercise performance of the NPC deputies and makes an emphasis on the differences between the actual situation of their power exercise and the original system design. The paper has also made use of a third-party search tool of public opinions to collect data for relevant online reports published in 2019. The same statistical analysis method is then applied to the searched results for comparison with and verification of the findings of this paper, and it has proved a general conformity between the two sets of data collected from different information sources.The study comes to the following findings. First of all, the image of the NPC deputies as reflected in the official media is almost perfect which is in accordance with the fine example set by system design for all sectors to follow. Secondly, apart from carrying out the obligations endowed by the constitution and the law, NPC deputies in practice also function to support and publicize the decisions made by the Party and the state. Thirdly, there is the deviation between the NPC deputies’ power exercise and the representative structure, and the system tends to be much influenced by the elite. The civil servants, the leaders of the various social organizations and the intellectual are the three main forces for the power exercise. Last but not least, when expressing the public opinion, the NPC deputies prefers expressions of the professional perspective to regional perspective.This paper comes from the research consistency as the studied materials all come from People’s Daily. Drawing upon the quantitative analysis with full and rich coverage spanning a long period, this thesis focuses on the image, function and power excercise performance of the NPC deputies since the founding of our country. Meanwhile, it finds out the differences and weak links by comparing the actual situation and the system design, which will be beneficial to the improvements of the work of the NPC deputies. The paper goes on to propose a number of policy suggestions, such as promoting information disclosure, fully utilizing the internet and information technology, establishing the national unified platform, encouraging the NPC deputies to positively exercise power, optimizing the representative structure, enhancing the training for power exercise, strengthening the deputies’ capacity of power exercise and improving the capacity-building of NPC office workers.