Picture source @Visual China
text | Xiong Chumo, please note that
is of low quality in everything, only with high traffic.
Two winter vacation homework books for primary school students, tens of millions of Internet celebrities shouting from a distance, a fake uncle who pretends to be a nephew, and the Xichang Elementary School has found no such person... This is a TV series with a cliché plot, but it has become popular among Internet celebrities, the media, With the support of the platform, it continued to ferment and reversed several times, occupying the commanding heights of public opinion for many days.
After the noise subsided, CCTV identified "Qin Lang lost his winter vacation homework in Paris" as the new yellow news.
"Yellow news" refers to a type of news that is provocative and of low style. It usually does not have great social value and is purely a bottomless pandering to public interests. Some "news" that are superficial but provocative and eye-catching are called "new yellow news."
Similar incidents have occurred frequently in recent years. Only after looking at the hot searches on Weibo that filled the screen, the public realized that they seemed to have become a part of the play again.
The same is true for this controversy. From the Internet to the clarification, rumors were first spread and then refuted. contradictory hot search topics took turns, and the national attention jumped left and right according to the trend of hot searches. Whether it is the initiator of the staged photo shoot, or the media and platforms that use the traffic, everyone has gained enough popularity in this traffic farce.
The truth is that no one cares about it.
This can’t help but make people think deeply. Who is creating hot searches in batches?
News is distorted, and trust crises are frequent.
The Central Committee of the Communist Youth League previously issued a blog to remind the public to be wary of the traffic business behind rumors: "Stir up the popularity to provoke confrontation, use public opinion to sell anxiety, first create rumors and then refute them, and you can eat all the traffic heat."
This routine is very common and has been tried repeatedly.
In the incident of Qin Lang losing his winter vacation homework, the blogger who posted the original post has tens of millions of fans, so he naturally understands the logic of hot hits. Later, accounts claiming to be Qin Lang's uncle and Qin Lang's teacher got wind of the situation and staged photos to deceive the public in order to gain traffic. A netizen who claimed to be his uncle even bluntly said that he was "taking traffic" when faced with doubts and welcomed everyone to "report".
At this point, things have completely changed.
As the plot progresses, there are hot searches one after another. From the very beginning of "Qin Lang in Class Eight of the Year" to "Relevant departments intervened to investigate the incident of Qin Lang losing his winter vacation homework", from "Uncle bought test papers and gave Qin Lang lost his winter vacation homework" to "Uncle Qin Lang's account was banned", rumors and refutations gathered together. In hot search.
After several twists and turns, the incident has now come to a successful conclusion, but the doubts of the onlookers have not been resolved. Many netizens believed that the incident was staged from the beginning.
In fact, similar trust crises have broken out many times.
Recently, a news article "Tourists spent 30,000 yuan to charter a yacht from Sanya to Zhanjiang" became a hot search topic. It was later confirmed that there is no such route at all, and netizens posted it just to gain traffic. Further back, unconfirmed topics such as "1.5 billion found in a breast surgeon's home", "bride snatching in Guizhou", "long-term coffee drinking can lead to excessive cortisol" have all appeared on hot searches.
After careful combing, it is not difficult to find that the common features of such hot search events are that they are mostly "spread online" and the topic itself caters to public interest.
Some people in the industry analyzed that online content that is closely related to public life and easily arouses enthusiasm is a natural hot search quality. Use the Internet as the source of information, airborne hot searches without any verification, and attract traffic first. Even if the subsequent events are reversed, it can deny the Internet transmission and form a closed loop of hot searches.
This is exactly what The Paper emphasized when commenting on Qin Lang’s incident of losing his homework in Paris: “The existing media ecology actually encourages this kind of creation.”
Let’s take another example. Previously, the topic "1.5 billion found in a breast surgeon's home" became a hot search topic. The topic was on the list for a total of 80 minutes. Weibo data shows that the topic has been read as high as 80.482 million. The host of this topic, "Toutiao News", is the official account of Sina News.
only a few hours later, the rumor refuting hot search list was on the list. The topic #网传 breastsurgeon unearthed 150 million untrue # reached 68.99 million views and the topic was on the list for 182 minutes. Sina's news officer posted a blog post on the topic of refuting the rumor, saying it was "seriously untrue."
I would like to ask, when content similar to "online rumors" has become a hot search topic, and rumors have repeatedly reached the top of public opinion, where does the word trust come from?
Human intervention, mass-produced hot searches
are crowded all over the world, all for profit. In the era where traffic is king, the benefits behind the creation of "new yellow news" and the closed loop of popular searches that spread rumors and then refute them are obvious.
Qin Lang lost his job in Paris. 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 scandal involving secretly photographing a girl on the subway caused a stir. Related topics were on the hot search list for more than 20 times in a row, which repeatedly affected social sentiment and led to Weibo traffic peaks one after another. Under the interests of
to harvest traffic and guide public opinion, magical incidents like Qin Lang losing his job in Paris have been repeatedly banned.
On the one hand, at the source of news production, "news" with low cost, low value, low meaning and high traffic income is being produced in batches. In the dissemination and fermentation process, the above-mentioned “news” is exactly the content favored by hot searches.
With the rise of self-media, everyone has a microphone in their hands, and the threshold for news production has been greatly lowered. Coupled with the traffic distribution of the platform, a lot of the "news" pushed to the public are trivial daily matters, and even fake news with serious staged effects. An analysis by
pointed out that the platform’s recommendation of such content is actually a common method to deal with competition and compete for users’ attention. “If only a single rumor is on the hot search, it can be understood as a temporary negligence. Similar incidents happen frequently, and it is difficult to be regarded as such.” It's an accident."
On the other hand, there has always been a dispute over "public opinion or business" surrounding the hot search mechanism, and loopholes in human intervention in hot searches have been repeatedly exposed.
Taking Weibo, an important public opinion portal on the entire network, as an example, the ranking rules show that the hot search algorithm mechanism will calculate the comprehensive popularity of all hot words every minute based on search volume, blog volume, interaction volume, reading volume and other data indicators. Take the top 50 for display. The relevant person in charge of Weibo has also publicly stated that Weibo’s human intervention in hot searches is a post-review mode, such as removing rumored content from the list, and regulating content that provokes wars and abuses.
In short, there is human intervention in Weibo hot searches, the purpose is to make the hot search list better and reflect social sentiment more truly.
In actual operations, human intervention goes beyond this dimension. Taking the purchase and sale of hot-searched gray products as an example, Xiong Chumo got a quote from a marketing service provider for the hot-searched list: "The total base fee model is 45,000, and if the package model is successful, it will be 100,000. It depends on the demand, The information is normally available." According to the hot search quotation list provided by
service provider,
, the principle of ranking is also very simple. By controlling various accounts such as media influencers, KOLs, and amateurs to jointly publish the same topic, It gathers traffic in a short period of time, and after about 4 to 5 hours of fermentation, the topic becomes a hot search. Moreover, not only the Weibo hot search list, but other lists can also be ranked. Taking the hot search list in Beijing as an example, the price to enter the list is 12,000.
The service provider said: "The official advertising space is hundreds of thousands more, and there are carousels and advertising signs. Third-party rankings can be disguised as normal hot search topics, which is more cost-effective."
In addition, "Ziguang Pavilion Ditch" The classic incident of "Oil", and the accusation that the mobile game "Ni Shui Han" "will be listed on hot searches if you are paid, and your account will be banned if you are not paid". Many cases actually point to the same message: whether it is overt or covert, the hot search ranking mechanism seems to be the same. There is room for maneuver.
With multiple interference factors superimposed, how can the public opinion direction of the hot search list be consistent with the real public opinion in society? How to ensure the authenticity of the content? Behind the
storm, "gatekeepers" failed in their duties. Lu Yin, the founder of communication science, proposed that there are "gatekeepers" in group communication. Only information that meets the value standards and group norms of the "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 are not "must record everything you hear", but must be screened, filtered, and checked.
Who is the “gatekeeper” in the current communication order? Judging from the public opinion turmoil, the media and platforms have no shirk.
industry insiders believe: "Today's news dissemination activities are different from traditional ones, and the scope of gatekeepers has also expanded. Self-media, social platforms, content platforms and regulatory authorities all have gatekeeper responsibilities. Platform gatekeeping is a top priority because Hot searches are a gathering place for hot topics in society, but the proliferation of 'new yellow news' and rumors has proven the platform's dereliction of duty."
The multiple penalties imposed by the regulatory authorities also directly pointed out the platform's oversight, review, distribution and other links. dereliction of duty.
In October 2023, the Shanghai Cyberspace Administration of China interviewed Sina Shanghai regarding hot search rumors, and clearly pointed out that Sina bears the main responsibility for the hot search topics created and the authenticity of the information published and reprinted, and shall not use false topics, "hot spots" or "titles" Party" and other methods to spread hype and false information.
