Author: Sun Xin (Researcher, Xinjiang University, Xinjiang University, Lecturer, School of Journalism and Communication, Xinjiang University).
*: Young Journalists, Issue 14, 2023.
Introduction: In the digital age, the alienation of news production time needs to go beyond "speed": from the perspective of news time relationship, "acceleration" is used as a means to fully develop news productivity; Adhering to the concept of multiple speeds, we strive to adjust the relationship between news production; On the basis of the dual critique of news productivity and the relationship between news production, we should pursue more free time for news production.
Journalism is a social activity that is "made according to the time"[1], and journalists become journalists in the pursuit of time. With the acceleration of scientific and technological progress, the acceleration of social changes, and the acceleration of the pace of life[2] on news activities, "acceleration" has become a hot topic in the study of news time in the digital age. In the face of the "time barrenness" of producing ideal news, and the "time panic" of realizing the ideal of news, is news acceleration the "**" of the above-mentioned phenomenon of news production time alienation? Can news deceleration become a "prescription" for the alienation of news production time? This paper attempts to answer the above questions by focusing on the relationship between the speed of news and the alienation of news production time in the digital age.
Acceleration: Typical of news production time in the digital age.
1) How to understand the time of news production in the digital age.
News time is a social time based on natural time and life time, which reflects the movement, change and development of different news actors in news practice. News time includes the time when news facts occur, the time when news is produced, and the time when news is received. This paper focuses on the analysis of news production (dissemination) time in the relationship between the three types of news time.
The timing of news production is historic. After experiencing the free news production time in the pre-journalism era and the standardized news production time in the journalism era, we are now in the stage of flexible news production time in the digital age [3]. Different from the standardized news production time marked by clocks and watches, the flexible news production time in the digital age has gradually "fallen off" from the uniform, measurable, linear, and irreversible standardized news time frame, and has begun to show non-linear, point-like, and discontinuous time characteristics.
In the daily practice of news production, news producers have formed a form of news production time called "timeization" [4] according to the flexible news production time structure in which they are located. According to the rhythm of "time-turnedness", people arrange daily news production actions and shape the concept and practice mode of news production interaction. "Temporalization" is a kind of "timeless time" as Castel said, and the arrangement and coordination of news production actions have lost a unified reference [5], and there is no given time point for occurrence; News production occurs only when it happens, and the time of news production is the time of news production itself; The interaction of different news actors in news production is only a coincidence, and it is a kind of unexpected encounter. The "timeliness" of news production time, as described by Han Byung-chul, "collapsed into many directionless and busy points"[6], which is also the "bad" news production time that has been broken and lost its inherent order in the pen of many scholars.
2) The specific form of accelerated news production in the digital age.
The acceleration of news production in the digital age encompasses two types.
The first is the acceleration of the production time of quantitative news, which, as Rosa puts it, is "the increase in the number of events per unit of time" [7]. "Compressed time distance" is the most common phenomenon in quantifying the acceleration of news production time. By compressing the time interval between the occurrence time of news facts and the time of news production, the transition from "news is new" and "news is immediate" to "news at the same time" is completed. By compressing the time interval in the process of news production and dissemination, the transition from "news timely" and "news instantaneous" to "news present" has been realized. Short news and double speed** are specific manifestations of the compression of news presentation time.
"Increasing time intensity" is another manifestation of the acceleration of time to quantify news production. In a specific news period, the frequency of news production can be increased by increasing the number of times news producers' practical behaviors occur and the frequency of producing and disseminating news can be increased. For example, the frequency of news publication (push) has changed from 1 daily publication and distribution in the paper media era to multiple daily pushes in WeChat***. For another example, news producers complete the information collection of news A, the editing and processing of news B, and the distribution and push of news C at the same time in the same time period, and this production mode of multi-task simultaneous development increases the labor intensity of news producers.
Longer working hours" became an inevitable consequence of the acceleration of quantitative news production. In order to cope with the ever-shrinking time gap of news production and the increasing intensity of news production, news producers can only respond by "extending working hours". The emergence of a "24-hour non-closing" newsroom means that news producers are bridging the gap in news production time by compressing their own life time.
The second is the acceleration of the production time of qualitative news. The first manifestation is the "variation" of the news production time. The working hours of a news organization can be divided into "hot hours" and "cold hours" according to the intensity and workload of the work [8]. The changes in the rhythm of news production in the digital era are manifested in the following: the "hot hour" of news production has advanced from "3 o'clock in the afternoon" in the traditional news era to "6 o'clock in the morning" in the digital news era [9]; In the digital age, there is a "hot hour" of all-weather news production, and news producers are in a state of intense work from morning to night.
The acceleration of news production in the digital age has induced a trend of news production time "falling off" from the standardized clock time frame, and the elasticity of news production time has become more and more obvious. In the flexible news production time structure, news producers follow the rhythm of "time-based" news operation, and news production time does not have a beginning (end), time interval, time sequence, or cycle, and becomes "frozen" time. When the "frozen" news production time will be activated and how it will be revived is uncertain, and it is all random. In the "frozen" time of news production, the "present" collapses into a fleeting point in time, breaking with the past and the future. In such a situation, the reliability of news production time experience accelerates the decay, and it is more difficult to form a stable news production time expectation.
The "timely" or "frozen" state of news production time indicates the regular fluidity of news production time. In the absence of a stable reference to the time of news production, asynchronicity between different news producers is enhanced. In order to achieve synchronization of news production actions, the frequency of news time coordination has increased. The traditional news** weekly topic selection meeting and daily morning meeting have evolved into high-frequency, more flexible, and ad hoc "benchmarking meetings" or "meet-ups" in digital news production departments [10].
Accelerating the alienation of news production time in the digital age.
1) Understand the alienation of news production time.
Based on Marx's definition of alienation and absorbing the beneficial elements of Rosa's understanding of accelerated alienation in society, this paper explains the alienation of news production time in the digital age as follows.
First, the alienation of news production time permeates the alienation of journalistic labor. According to Marx's understanding of the alienation of labor, as a type of human labor, the alienation of news labor is embodied in the alienation of the relationship between news producers and news products, and news products become "alien beings" of news producers. The relationship between news producers and the news production process has become alienated, and the news production process has become a labor process in which news producers are exploited and forced. The relationship between news producers and self is alienated, and they gradually lose the consciousness and ability of self-reflection and continuous innovation. In journalistic labor, the relationship between different news producers is alienated, and there is only oppression and exploitation among them.
Second, the essence of the alienation of news production time is the alienation of the relationship between news producers and news production time. The alienation of news production time describes the state or relationship between news producers and news production time. In the standardized news production time of traditional journalism, social time, represented by clocks and watches, has become an alien force[11], dominating news producers with the posture of an independent time system. In the digital age, with the emergence of a flexible news time structure and a "time-based" news time form, news producers are increasingly "out of control" of news production time.
The opposite of loss of control is control. The control of news production time by news producers is manifested in the aggregation, setting, coordination, and distribution of news production time. Whether news producers have the ability to aggregate multiple news production time in a specific field, whether they are qualified to measure and evaluate news production time, whether they have the opportunity to achieve coordination and synchronization of different news production time, and whether they have the right to participate in the allocation of news production time have become the indicators of whether news producers can control news production time. In other words, only when the news producer controls the news production time can the news producer get rid of the fate of being enslaved by the news production time, and can he break through the nightmare of being abandoned by the news production time.
2) The manifestations and consequences of the alienation of news production time.
In the digital age, there is a disorder within the production time of news. On the one hand, as mentioned above, the flexible news production time structure and the "time-based" news production time form make the news production time in the digital age present non-linear, point-like, and discontinuous temporal characteristics. Digital technology has destroyed standardized news production time, but it has not yet reconstructed a consensus and wide-ranging reference for news production time. As a result, the time of news production is internally out of order. On the other hand, with the advent of communication platforms, news production time has been impacted and affected by digital labor time. Based on the employment relationship, digital working hours can be divided into hired digital working hours and non-employing digital working hours. The digital labor hours of professional and technical personnel such as full-time editors, reporters, and algorithm engineers of news platforms constitute the digital labor hours of employment. There are two types of non-employment digital labor time: one is the flexible employment of freelancers, that is, "content workers", who consciously produce original content with the help of communication platforms, and form non-employment labor relationships with communication platforms in the form of crowdsourcing, which constitutes "non-employment conscious digital labor hours"; The second is that ordinary news users unconsciously produce content in the process of news consumption, and these contents are used to reproduce the content of the communication platform, thus forming "non-employment unconscious digital labor time". At present, there is a certain degree of disorder within the employment digital labor time, the non-employment digital labor time, and the employment digital labor time and the non-employment digital labor time.
In the interaction with digital labor time, news production time has lost its autonomy to a certain extent. First, the acceleration of news consumption time has forced the acceleration of news production time. The availability of digital technology makes it possible for users to consume news at any time. The immediacy of news consumption time indicates that news consumers are unwilling to "wait"; Immediately meeting the needs of news users has gradually become the law of news production. As a result, news production time is kidnapped by news consumption time, and autonomy is lost. Second, the acceleration of social change has led to a shorter period of time for the process of news facts to unfold. This also forces news producers to incorporate news facts into the process of news production with a faster speed of news information collection.
The life time of the news producer is being swallowed up by the production time. For those working in news production, the "flexible working hours" system extends the news workplace from the "work" to the "family", which accelerates the erosion of working hours on life time. For the "content workers" in content production, the "flexible working hours system" makes the content production work location "ubiquitous"; From the performance point of view, the "content spirit worker" can autonomously turn life time into working time, but what it gets is only a kind of "call-in, lingering" and insecure working time. For ordinary news users, the "production" of news consumption time makes the life time and leisure time of news users be converted into unpaid digital labor time.
The above manifestations of the alienation of news production time in the digital age have brought about the "time barrenness" of producing ideal news. Driven by the logic of acceleration, news producers began to move from "earning work" to "earning traffic" [12]. The acceleration of the production of "news flow" does not mean that the quality of news will improve at the same time, but that the time used to produce ideal news is becoming more and more scarce. This "time shortage" has led to the following problems in news content: a large number of templated, bland and boring fast-food news flock to news platforms; Time-consuming in-depth reporting and investigative journalism are at a disadvantage, and all kinds of superficial and time-saving news are expelled from the field of news production; In order to release news in real time, news facts are "sausage-cut" and presented as fragments of news facts; In order to pursue 100,000+, when a certain type of news becomes a hit, similar news is immediately copied in batches, and the news text is becoming mediocre under the trend of becoming more and more homogeneous. The logic of "earning traffic" has led news producers to drift away from the ideal news [13] that respects the laws of news dissemination, adheres to social justice, and serves the public interest.
Accelerating news production has put news producers in a growing state of time anxiety. The increase in the number of news production tasks per unit time and the overload of individual news labor have made news producers tired of coping; The acceleration of the routine change of news production time has led to the rapid decay of the utility of existing production experience, and news producers are always in a state of ability anxiety. The news agent that accelerates the creation of news production pushes news producers into the abyss of "time panic". In the human-machine-assisted agent news in the weak artificial intelligence stage [14], the importance of news production time with people as the main body is decreasing, and it is gradually moving to the edge in the intelligent news production time system. In human-computer interaction agent journalism in the stage of strong artificial intelligence, when news production no longer requires human participation, the news production time with human subjects may become "useless". Whether it is "time anxiety" or "time panic", this is contrary to the original intention of people to achieve news ideals by increasing the speed of news production.
3) Acceleration is not the source of the alienation of news production time.
The essence of the acceleration of news production time driven by digital technology is that media technology has improved the level of news productivity. Digital technology accelerates information collection, editing and processing, text dissemination, and content presentation, shortens the production cycle of a single press release, increases the number of press releases produced per unit time, and improves news production efficiency. Whether it is the acceleration of quantitative news production time such as "compressing time", "increasing intensity" and "extending working hours" mentioned above, or the acceleration of qualitative news production time such as "changing rhythm", "freezing time" and "regular fluidity of time", it is the concrete embodiment of the availability of news production time in the acceleration dimension.
The availability of news time brought about by the improvement of news productivity provides the possibility for the generation of new relationships between news producers and news production time, news production time and news fact time, news production time and news consumption time, and news production time and digital labor time. "Possibility" can be both creative and destructive. This destructive force is concentrated in the fact that the accelerating news productivity has broken the standardized news production time relationship in the journalism era, without forming a new and benign digital news production time relationship. Although we are aware of the destructiveness brought about by the improvement of news productivity, we have not found the real "root cause" of the "disease" - the "bad" digital labor relationship behind the time relationship of news production.
The logic of capital dominates digital labor relations, leading to the separation of content production and news producers, which is the root cause of the alienation of news production time since industrial civilization. The logic of capital is the greedy grabbing of surplus value and the infinite pursuit of capital appreciation. Compared with the natural speed represented by human and animal power, the mechanical speed represented by the printing machine and the electronic speed represented by the telegraph have improved the news productivity of traditional journalism. The increase in the productivity of journalism has reduced the socially necessary labor time, but the disposable time saved by this has been converted into surplus labor time. The crux of the alienation of news production time in the digital age lies in the fact that digital news production has not been freed from the control of capital logic. Compared with the traditional journalism era, the difference is only that the logic of capital has developed from the logic of industrial capital and financial capital to the logic of platform capital in the digital age.
Platform capital logic is the latest form of "collusion" between digital technology and capital logic, and "flow" is the specific form of platform capital. In order to maximize the capital appreciation of flows, communication platforms have developed a more covert and thorough exploitation of digital labor time. Communication platforms fully digitize the production and life of those who hire content producers, blurring the boundaries between working time and living time. In the lie that "content producers have the flexibility to choose their working hours", make hired content producers "willingly" convert their own life time into working hours for exploitation by platform capital. In the form of "crowdsourcing", "sharing" and "gig workers"[15], the communication platform has established a non-employment labor relationship with "content workers". As a result, the communication platform not only evades the corresponding legal responsibilities and obligations due to "non-employment", but also uses the competition logic and bonus incentive mechanism [16] to induce "content workers" to participate in content production, so as to steal the remaining labor time. At the same time, platform capital also exploits the "free labor of consumption" [17] of news users.
The abandonment of the alienation of news production time in the digital age.
1) Realize the "benign acceleration" under the dominance of news production time
News time includes news fact time, news production time, and news consumption time, and the acceleration of news production time is directly affected by the acceleration of news fact time and news consumption time. The alienation of news production time is manifested in the "bad" relationship between the three types of news time. Therefore, we need to jump out of "newsroom centrism" and not limit our attention to news production time[18], but reflect on the root cause of the alienation of news production time from the relationship between news production time, news fact time, news production time and news consumption time, and explore the way to solve it.
From the perspective of news time relationship, news producers should be aware that news production time plays a leading role in the overall news time evolution. Whether in the "journalism era" or the "post-journalism era", the degree of development and acceleration of news production time dominates the evolution of news time as a whole. In news activities in the digital age, news producers should have a clear sense of news time autonomy, and strive to be the coordinator of news time relations, the formulator of news time frame, and the executor of news time system. News producers should use the habit (routine) of news production time as a means to promote the effective interaction between news production time, news fact time, and news consumption time, and realize the "benign acceleration" of news on the basis of rebuilding the news time order.
2) Adjust digital labor relations with the concept of multiple speeds.
If acceleration is regarded as the alienation of news production time, then as long as news production is slowed down, it seems that "the cure will be cured". However, the evolution of digital technology and the development of news productivity are not subject to human will, and forcibly "slowing down" is tantamount to using a mantis arm as a car. The development of news productivity brought about by the acceleration of technology has laid the foundation for the alienation of news production time. The acceleration of news productivity has disintegrated the inherent and irrational news time relationship, and has made it possible to create a new and benign news time relationship. From the perspective of the relationship between "news production speed" and "news production time alienation", the key to solving the problem is not whether it accelerates, decelerates or keeps it at a constant speed, but whether news producers can control the speed of news production autonomously under the guidance of the concept of multiple speeds.
Proactive adjustment of digital labor relations is the key to realizing "content producers' independent control of speed". Data, computing power, and algorithms constitute the means of content production in the digital era, and to adjust the digital labor relations in the digital era, it is necessary to adjust the ownership of the means of content production and highlight the people's subjectivity of the means of content production. First, the data running on the communication platform is owned by the Communist Party of the whole people, and all the data produced by the whole people can participate in the "calculation" of the communication platform equally; Second, the algorithm of the communication platform is co-created by the whole people, and the whole people play the role of the designer and operator of the content algorithm, and jointly complete the creation, operation and operation of the algorithm of the communication platform; Third, the computing power on the communication platform is jointly built by the whole people to achieve justice in the distribution of content computing power.
3) Pursue the free time of news production to transcend the alienation of news production time.
Whether it is to achieve a "benign acceleration" of news production or to adjust the relations of news production, it is only a means to abandon the alienation of news production time. The goal is to pursue more free time for news production. The acceleration of news production shortens socially necessary labor hours, resulting in a great deal of free time. Whether this free time belongs to its creator, the news producer, or is separated from the producer and turned into surplus labor time, stolen by the platform capitalists, depends on what kind of production relations and what kind of ownership of the means of production the news producer is in. In other words, "virtuous acceleration" creates free time for news production, and "adjusting the relations of news production" ensures that this free time is the free time for news production that belongs to the producer. Under the premise of double criticism and transcendence of news productivity (speed) and news production relations, news producers have free time for news production. As a result, producers can produce more ideal news that respects the laws of communication, adheres to social justice, and serves the public interest, and can realize the ideal of journalism in a broader space for self-development.
This paper is the phased achievement of the scientific research initiation project of Xinjiang University "Research on the Connotation and Construction Path of China's Intelligent Mainstream", and the phased results of the 2022 Graduate Education and Teaching Reform Project of Xinjiang University (No. XJDX2022YJG26).
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This article refers to the citation format:
Sun Xin. Beyond "Speed": The Alienation and Abandonment of News Production Time in the Digital Age[J], 2023(14):31-34