Picked up Qin Lang's homework, the blogger has contacted the child's mother What do you think of the online rumor of Qin Lang's loss of winter vacation homework The relevant departments intervened to investigate Qin Lang's winter vacation homework incident ......Just when people were still enjoying the last leisure of the Spring Festival holiday, a series of topics about "Qin Lang lost his homework" frequently appeared on the hot search, resulting in a large-scale "looking for people" incident. Many netizens wondered: Who is Qin Lang? Where is Qin Lang?
Things started like this: the Internet celebrity short **blogger "Thurman Cat Cup", who has 40 million followers on the whole network, posted **, saying that she was on the street of Paris, and a Frenchman handed her two winter vacation homework that she picked up in the toilet, and the owner was "Qin Lang, Class 8 of the first grade", and asked her to help "return it to the owner". Subsequently, a self-proclaimed "Uncle Qin Lang" surfaced, he said that his nephew studied at Xichang Primary School, and he also opened a **live broadcast.
Paris, France, winter vacation homework, ...... for elementary school studentsThe combination of these elements, coupled with the impetus of the "Internet V", quickly mobilized people's emotions. The blogger in question claimed that he wanted to bring the homework back to China and return it to the owner, which aroused netizens' concern about Qin Lang's ** - it seems that this seems to be another "Internet warm news": KOLs (key opinion leaders) use the power of the online community to help individuals. Such a story can be called the standard paradigm of positive energy storytelling on the Internet.
However, under the continuous questioning of netizens, "Uncle Qin Lang" revealed that his behavior was a pose of "rubbing traffic", and the relevant account was soon banned. A reporter asked many Xichang primary schools across the country, and they all received a reply of "no such person". On February 19, "Thurman Cat Cup" responded that Qin Lang's mother had been contacted, and "Qin Lang's Winter Vacation Homework Incident Finale" ranked first in the hot search.
Accounts that fabricated identities and fabricated rumors were dealt with, and the hustle and bustle of a "hot search news" seemed to come to an end. However, this incident also makes people think: Is such a "hot search news" really meaningful and has communication value? As "hot searches" have become an important channel for the public to obtain information, not only Internet platforms have taken "hot searches" as the main way to set their agendas, but also online content producers have pursued to participate in "hot searches". However, not all of these "hot searches" belong to the news, and there should be more careful thinking and gatekeeping in this regard.
Chen Lidan, a journalism theorist, believes that news is a narrative of facts that occur objectively and have newsworthiness. According to this definition, "objectively occurring" and "newsworthy" are the most basic elements that constitute news.
According to this analysis, many "hot search news" do not meet the conditions of "objective occurrence" - either they belong to the planning of publishers and relevant stakeholders, or lack sufficient evidence and factual details. As for the more subjective "news value", I am afraid that it is not true in many online communication incidents, how important and significant can a primary school student be if he loses his homework?
As one of the comments published by The Paper put it: "If you measure the elements of journalism, you will immediately be full of loopholes." And in a public sense, it's not much value. In addition to causing many netizens to ridicule and tease a (possibly) primary school student, 'Paris Lost Homework' is really difficult to have much meaning. ”
It cannot be denied that the main body of Internet information production and dissemination is diversified, in addition to traditional institutions, a large number of content published on Internet platforms occupy the traffic highland. Some people believe that news production has transformed from "news" to "content", shaping a new model of news production. However, this kind of "generalization" of the concept of news and the value of news is likely to lead to the unnecessary consumption of public attention, which in turn leads to negative communication consequences.
Tu Lingbo, a professor at Communication University of China, and Liu Mengqing, a graduate student, critically pointed out in "Reflection on the News Generalization Phenomenon of Platform-based Content Production": "In order to cater to user emotions, fragmented reading habits and strive for scarce attention resources, content producers generalize entertainment gossip, life trivialities, and service information into news, and the content production of the platform presents a news generalization phenomenon and even pseudo-news phenomenon in which news information and other information are mixed and blended. ”
"News generalization" is not a phenomenon unique to the Internet age. As early as the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, there was a "yellow journalism wave" in the American newspaper industry. In A History of American Journalism, Emory & Sons wrote, "Yellow journalism is, at worst, a new style of journalism without a soul. Yellow journalists, while claiming to care about 'the people,' stuff the news channels that ordinary people rely on to get their news with appalling, flashy, exciting, and nonchalant news, turning life's major problems into cheap farces and news into the best things for newsboys to sell loudly. Worst of all, instead of being the leaders of society, they justify crime and atrocities. ”
Nowadays, news dissemination no longer relies on the street sales of newsboys, but the "hot search news" output without a bottom line for network traffic is no different from the sales of newsboys back then. Regardless of whether "Qin Lang's homework" is real or not, many ** regard a piece of entertainment uploaded by the network up master as news, and report it in a deliberate manner, which has been out of the scope of serious news and information dissemination from the beginning.
The content production and distribution mechanism of the Internet not only opens up a new track for bringing income through the creation of content, but also puts forward higher requirements for the media literacy of ordinary people. Distinguishing between real news and fake news, and screening valuable and credible information are the basic abilities that contemporary netizens should have. At the same time, platforms should also improve the content distribution mechanism, encourage high-quality content production, not be an instigator of online emotions, and be a guardian of objective and rational value orientation.
*: China Youth Daily client).