Text: Please note that Xiong is out of ink.Everything is inferior, only the flow is high.
Two primary school students' winter vacation homework, tens of millions of Internet celebrities shouted in the air, pretending to be the nephew's fake uncle, and there was no ...... of Xichang Primary School who found this personis a series with an old-fashioned plot, but with the help of Internet celebrities and ** platforms, it continues to ferment and flip several times, occupying the commanding heights of society for many days.
The hustle and bustle receded, and CCTV defined "Qin Lang's winter vacation homework in Paris" - new yellow news.
"Yellow journalism" refers to a type of news that is inflammatory and does not have a high style, which usually does not have great social value, and is purely a bottomless pandering to the public's taste. Some superficial but inflammatory and eye-catching "news" are called "new yellow journalism".
In recent years, similar incidents have occurred frequently. Only after watching the hot search on Weibo that the public realized that they seemed to have become a part of the play again.
The same is true of this turmoil, from the Internet to clarification, first spread rumors and then refute rumors, contradictory hot search topics take turns, and the attention of the whole people jumps left and right with the direction of the hot search. Whether it is the initiator of posing for the photo, or the ** and platform that rubs traffic, everyone has earned enough heat in this traffic farce.
The truth, on the contrary, is the most uncared for.
This can't help but make people think, who is making hot searches in batches?
The news is distorted, the crisis of trust is frequent, and the Communist Youth League previously posted a blog reminding the public to be wary of the traffic business behind the rumors: "Rubbing the heat to provoke confrontation, using ** to sell anxiety, first spreading rumors and then refuting rumors, and the traffic heat is all-you-can-eat."
This routine is extremely common and tried and tested.
In Qin Lang's winter vacation homework incident, the original post blogger played the role of tens of millions of fans, and naturally knew the logic of the explosion. Later, the account claiming to be Qin Lang's uncle and Qin Lang's teacher moved when he heard the news, and posed for photos to deceive the public in order to rub traffic. Netizens who claimed to be their uncles even bluntly said that they were "rubbing traffic" in the face of doubts, and everyone was welcome to "report".
At this point, things have completely turned sour.
As the plot progresses, there are hot searches one after another. From the very beginning of "Qin Lang in eight classes a year" to "relevant departments intervened in the investigation of Qin Lang's loss of winter vacation homework", from "Uncle bought test papers and sent Qin Lang to lose winter vacation homework" to "Qin Lang's uncle account was banned", the dual information of rumors and rumors gathered in the hot search.
After several tosses, now the incident has ushered in a happy ending, but the doubts of the onlookers have not been resolved, and many netizens think that this incident was a pose from the beginning.
In fact, similar crises of confidence have erupted many times.
Recently, a news that "tourists spent 30,000 yuan to charter a yacht from Sanya to Zhanjiang" was on the hot search, and it was later confirmed that there was no such route at all, and netizens posted just to gain traffic. Further back, unconfirmed topics such as "1.5 billion yuan found in the breast surgeon's home", "Guizhou robbing relatives", "long-term coffee drinking can cause cortisol to be too high" and other unconfirmed topics have been on the hot search.
It is not difficult to find that the commonality of such hot search events is that most of them are "online transmission", and the topic itself caters to the interests of the public.
According to industry analysts, online content that is closely related to public life and is easy to attract people's blood is a natural hot search physique. Using the network as the source, the hot search is airborne without falsification, and the traffic is attracted first, even if the follow-up events are reversed, it can be conveyed into a closed loop of hot search by denying the network.
This is exactly what The Paper emphasized in its commentary on Qin Lang's Paris homework loss: "The existing media ecology is actually encouraging this kind of creation. ”
Here's another example. Previously, the topic of "1.5 billion yuan was found in the breast surgeon's home" was on the hot search, and the topic was on the list for a total of 80 minutes, and the Weibo data showed that the topic reading volume was as high as 804820 thousand. The host of the topic, "Headline News", is the official account of Sina News.
Only a few hours later, the rumors were refuted and the hot search was on the list, and it was rumored that the breast surgeon searched for 1The 500 million untrue topic was read 68.99 million, and the topic was on the list for 182 minutes. Sina News Officer posted a blog post on the topic of refuting rumors, saying that it was "seriously untrue".
Let's ask, similar "online transmission" content has become a hot search permanent, and rumors have repeatedly reached the highest point, where to talk about the word trust?
Human intervention, mass manufacturing of hot searches in the world, all for profit. In the era when traffic is king, creating "new yellow news", spreading rumors and refuting rumors, the benefits behind it are obvious.
Qin Lang lost his homework in Paris, and the platform won more than one traffic by relying on hot searches. If the plot has ups and downs, the effect can be doubled. For example, last year's uproar in the girls' subway ** oolong incident, related topics have been on the hot search for more than 20 consecutive times, repeatedly affecting social emotions, and Weibo traffic peaks again and again.
Under the guidance of the interests of harvesting traffic and guiding **, magical events similar to Qin Lang's Paris loss of homework have been repeatedly banned.
On the one hand, at the source of news production, low-cost, low-value, low-meaning, high-traffic "news" is being mass-produced. In the process of dissemination and fermentation, the above-mentioned "news" is precisely the content favored by hot searches.
With the rise of self-consciousness, everyone has a microphone in their hands, and the threshold for news production has been greatly lowered. Overlaying the traffic distribution of the platform, many of the "news" that are pushed to the public are trivial daily trivialities, and even fake news with serious traces of posing.
Some analysts pointed out that the platform's recommendation of such content is actually a common means to deal with competition and compete for users' attention, "If it is just a single rumor on the hot search, it can still be understood as a temporary negligence." Similar turmoil happens so often that it can hardly be dismissed as accidental. ”
On the other hand, there has always been a controversy around the hot search mechanism of "public opinion or business", and the loopholes of artificial intervention in hot search have also been repeated.
Taking Weibo, an important entrance to the whole network, as an example, the rules on the list show that the hot search algorithm mechanism will calculate the comprehensive popularity of all hot words every minute according to data indicators such as search volume, blog volume, interaction volume, and reading volume, and take the top 50 displays. The relevant person in charge of Weibo has also publicly stated that Weibo's artificial intervention in hot searches belongs to the post-audit mode, such as dealing with the content of rumors on the list, and regulating and controlling content such as wars and abuse.
In short, there is human intervention in Weibo hot searches, in order to make the hot search list change for the better and more truly reflect social emotions.
In actual operations, however, human intervention is more than this dimension. Taking the gray industry of buying and selling hot searches as an example, Xiong Chumo got the ** of the hot search list from a marketing service provider: the basic fee model is a total of 450,000, 100,000 if the package mode is successful, depending on the demand and information, it is normal to be able to get on. ”
The hot search list provided by the service provider is on the list.
According to reports, the principle of rushing the list is also very simple, by manipulating various accounts such as **blue V, KOL, and amateurs to jointly publish the same topic, gather traffic in a short time, and send the topic to the hot search after about 4 to 5 hours of fermentation. Moreover, not only the general list of Weibo hot searches, but also other lists can also be on the list. Taking the hot search list in Beijing as an example, the top of the list is 120 thousand.
The service provider said: "The official advertising space is hundreds of thousands, carousel, and advertising logos, and third-party rankings can be disguised as normal hot search topics, and it is more cost-effective." ”
In addition, the classic accident of "Ziguangge Gutter Oil" and the accusation of "Reverse Water Cold" mobile game "If you give money, you will be on the hot search, and if you don't give money to the account", many cases actually point to the same message: whether it is bright or dark, there seems to be room for operation in the hot search listing mechanism.
A variety of interference factors are superimposed, how can the **pointing of the hot search list be consistent with the social reality**? How to ensure the authenticity of the content?
Behind the turmoil, Lu Yin, the founder of communication science of "gatekeepers", proposed that there are "gatekeepers" in group communication, and only information that meets the value standards and group norms of "gatekeepers" can enter the communication channels. Later, the concept of "gatekeeper" was introduced into the field of news communication, making it clear that news activities should not be "recorded when they are heard", but should be screened, filtered, and checked.
Who are the "gatekeepers" in the current communication order? Combined with the turmoil, it is the responsibility of the platform and the platform.
Industry insiders believe: "Today's news dissemination activities are different from the traditional, and the scope of gatekeepers has also expanded, and self-government, social platforms, content platforms and regulatory departments have the responsibility of gatekeepers." Platform gatekeeping is also a top priority, because hot searches are a concentration of hot topics in society, but the proliferation of 'new yellow news' and rumors has proven the platform's dereliction of duty. ”
The repeated penalties imposed by the regulatory authorities also directly pointed out the platform's dereliction of duty in supervision, review, distribution and other links.
In October 2023, the Cyberspace Administration of Shanghai interviewed Sina Shanghai in response to hot search rumors, and clearly pointed out that Sina bears the main responsibility for the authenticity of the hot search topics opened and the information published **, and must not spread hyped and false information through false topics, "rubbing hot spots" and "headline parties".
Obviously, from the closed loop of hot search in the refutation of rumors, the word "online transmission" cannot be used as a "disclaimer", and the platform must be responsible for the adverse effects of rumor fermentation.
The platform also knows that high-quality content is the foundation of the community and the platform, and trust and satisfaction are the basis for user activity, and actively self-help based on this. For example, Weibo Hot Search will launch "Warm News" in the first half of 2023, in order to increase the recommendation of positive energy news, so as to alleviate some negative problems in the platform's content ecology.
As far as the objective situation is concerned, the effect of the platform's self-help action has not met expectations, and the stubborn problems of content distortion and hot search hype have not been substantively resolved.
Looking at the source of news production, in response to Qin Lang's loss of homework, Yi Xu, a partner at Hunan Jinzhou Law Firm, said that if the behavior of Internet celebrity bloggers is deliberately fictitious and posed, it may be false publicity. lead to misleading public, which may be suspected of constituting defamation or fraud.
Therefore, resisting the "new yellow news" and hot search rumors requires the joint participation of many parties, and it is also necessary to penetrate the surface and go behind the scenes to set things right. The pursuit of users and traffic, the lack of supervision and guidance of the platform, and the performance pressure faced by the platform in the business context such as user loss and revenue decline have directly or indirectly contributed to the current hot search chaos.
The winter vacation homework left in Paris is said to have been returned to its original owner, can the out-of-control hot search be recovered?