Statium | Algorithm exacerbates the fatigue of reading news

Author: Deputy Director and Master of Journalism Department of Zhang Tiantian Shenzhen University School of Communication

Is the news just needed? The answer to this question seems to be self -explanatory: In the subtle point, news is the best way to understand the big things around the world, and to obtain the news in full and comprehensively to facilitate our optimization of our action decisions; It plays an important role in shaping citizenship, strengthening social connection, condensing consensus, and building recognition. In this case, why are there a considerable proportion of people who read the news less and less, and even avoid the news consciously and proactively?

Burn by information brought by information overload

In fact, the phenomenon of News Avoidance has become increasingly prominent and has been confirmed in several large -scale surveys in recent years. In June of this year, Reuters Journalism, based on a survey of 46 countries and regions and 93432 people, released the 2022 digital news report (Digital News Report 2022). The report shows that 38 % of respondents said they would "sometimes avoid news or often avoid news." In 2017, the ratio was 29 %. Just two years later, this number rose to 32 %, and continued to rise in the following years.

Why are people more and more reluctant to watch news, and even take such a firm way of resisting? In this survey, 47 % of the news evidence pointed out that the reason why they actively avoided the news was that it was full of "too many politics and new crown epidemic reports." This result sounds incredible. When people encounter a global crisis of the new crown epidemic, do they need to use news to understand the latest information and trends in time, so as to constantly adjust their personal risk response strategies? In fact, after the new crown epidemic broke out in 2020, people's demand for news did soar, but this enthusiasm did not last long. Soon, the news avoidance phenomenon appeared again or even more significantly, so that many scholars started researching this.

People actively avoid news related to epidemic, I am afraid that the information during the epidemic period and the news burnout and negative emotions brought about by the epidemic are related. "Economist" pointed out that the new crown epidemic is the most important news report since World War II. Indeed, since 2020, this global hygiene crisis has spawned a large number of news reports about the virus, victims, government actions and its overall influence. Some scholars searched for "COVID -19 News" in Google in May 2021. There were more than 25.2 billion news entries generated. Most of these reports include some common elements, such as negative titles, statistical data for death, and the negative impact of epidemic conditions on ordinary families, medical staff and enterprises. For many people, this amazing amount of information is almost overwhelming, and it is easy to trigger people's burnout emotions for news.

In 2020, the Pew Research Center launched a survey of 10,000 American adults. 71 % of the respondents believed that they needed to "rest in the new crown". "". Studies have shown that only a few minutes after watching negative news reports, anxiety will be significantly enhanced, and continuous bad news will even bring people with symptoms of stimulating stress disorder after trauma. So, when people are immersed in the flow of outbreaks for several months or even years, how can they bear the negative emotions of tension, fear, sadness, and anxiety? Escape becomes the best way to save self -rescue. Even the US Centers for Disease Control suggests on its website: In order to reduce the pressure to respond to the new crown virus, news consumption should be limited several times a day and temporarily separated from telephone, TV and computer screens.

Continuously receiving high -level news push

From this point of view, the news of news during the epidemic is not a bad thing. It can be regarded as a specific reaction that people face the special information environment in a very period. It is a self -protection strategy that it takes the initiative to choose. The fact is not so simple. The emergence of news avoidance is not at the new crown epidemic, but it is further enlarged during the epidemic period, which is concerned. Some scholars believe that it is the current media environment that has changed the phenomenon to avoid news.

In the past two decades, with the advancement of media technology and the arrival of Internet and social media, the amount of information on our fingertips has increased geometrically. Obtaining information is never as easy as today. In the past, people's reading news was often concentrated in the morning and evening. Today, the information of the mobile phone is reminding you to watch this hustle and bustle world almost all day. No matter how hard you work, the news always seems to be finished. At the same time, what is the quality of information? It is undeniable that the degree of homogeneity of information, especially news, is also going to the peak step by step.

The rhythm of the news production of seven days a week and 24 hours a day brings high -quality original reports? Of course impossible. But what should I do to maintain a certain frequency and number of news updates? Adapted, replicated, aggregated, and even washing, the "replication" of the content has become the norm. As a result, a report that seems to have known each other appears on your mobile phone. Change the platform and change the channel, it seems that it is still those content. To make matters worse, the recommendation mechanism of social media algorithms has exacerbated the degree of homogeneity of content. Once the algorithm "calculates" your content preferences, you will spare no effort to feed you a report that you think you should like. As a result, people can always receive highly similar news push. In addition, the faster and faster news production rhythm has rarely released many information without verification. Increase the number of "information cocoons"

It seems that the increase in the number of news does not bring rich content and depth connotation, but weaves "information cocoons" for people, creating a "fascinating forest" that is difficult to distinguish between true and false. In such an information environment, people will gradually cause negative psychology such as fatigue, indifference, and boring. At the same time, when people are aware that it is difficult to obtain high -quality news content, its trust in the journalism will be reduced. These can give birth to people's news. Once this emotion is generated, even valuable news can be difficult to evoke people's interests and arouse people's attention.

Although news avoidance can be regarded as a active adjustment strategy in the current information environment, news is an important foundation for public life after all, and people's increasingly far away from the news does bring negative social impact. Therefore, many scholars began to think about how to make people return to the news. For example, some scholars advocate "constructive news": not only exposing social problems, but also to provide certain solutions in the report, or find experience that can be used for reference, so that people can see hope in the report, rather than complete negative information Essence Some scholars advocate "slow news" to present the news in a slow way, and provide some longer and more in -depth reports and more news backgrounds, thereby reducing the possibility of homogeneity of news to help those current news environment in the current news environment Those who are overwhelmed by endless information can even let those who have avoided news can change their minds. However, whether these prescriptions are valid and have not yet received support from empirical data, let's wait and see.

Source | Jingbao APP

Edit: Chen Jianguo

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