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  • 2024 Volume 46 Issue 10
    Published: 23 October 2024
      
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  • Are Reporters Still On-Site? The Influence of Social Media Intelligence on the Sources and Roles of Institutional Media
    ZHANG Erkun ZHANG Hongzhong LIU Shaoqiang REN Wujiong
    2024, 46(10): 6-26.
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    In traditional journalism, reporters need to be “physically present” to cover news stories. However, with the development of new communication technologies, the tradition of “reporters on the scene” as the primary source of information is changing. This paper examines the structural changes in news sources and the transformation of news production models in the context of internet technology development, using three major international conflicts in the 21st century as examples. The study identifies Social Media Intelligence (SOCMINT) as an increasingly significant source for institutional media. It further analyzes the characteristics and mechanisms of SOCMINT in three aspects: information production, fact-checking, and information dissemination. Finally, the paper explores the evolving role of institutional media in the SOCMINT era and offers new perspectives on how institutional media can function and fulfill their responsibilities through SOCMINT.
  • Can AI Match the Expertise of Financial Journalist in Writing News Commentary? An Online Experimental Analysis Based on the Heuristic-Systematic Model
    LU Hongcheng
    2024, 46(10): 27-48.
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    With recent advancements in generative AI, there is a discussion about whether AI writing can be further applied to news production that requires more opinions and creativity.Economic and financial news commentary, which is a typical genre of economic journalism characterized by standardization, subjectivity, logicality, serves as an apt news genre to explore the application boundaries of AI writing. Based on the Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM), this study investigated the impact of AI involvement in the production of financial commentary on the perceived expertise of the content through two sets of scenario experiments (N1=110; N2=582). Study 1 examined the perceived expertise differences between AI-generated and human-written financial commentary without prompting the audience to pay attention to the author. The results indicated that when readers processed the financial commentary vias systematic approach, they found it difficult to distinguish the expertise level between content written by AI and that by human journalists. Study 2 employed a 2 (actual author: human vs.AI)×3 (author attribution: human journalist vs. AI vs. anonymous) online experiment, to explore the mechanisms of the different perception of financial commentary written by different author under heuristic processing. The findings showed that when the audience was aware of the author's identity, financial commentary attributed to AI could enhance perceived expertise through authority heuristics and machine heuristics. Moreover, the audience’s attitude toward AI writing significantly strengthened the effect of machine heuristics on perceived content expertise. Considering the research conclusions, the authority and expertise that professional financial media have relied on to survive are also facing great challenges in the current AI era. Therefore, it is necessary to fully rebuild the authority and expertise of financial media to cope with the impact of AI writing.
  • No Hope of Becoming Famous: Work Routines and Identity Imagination of Platform Hot Topic Operators——Field Research Based on S Internet Company
    YU Yuehong
    2024, 46(10): 49-70.
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    “Identity recognition” has always been an important topic in traditional journalism research. With the shift of the primary spaces for news dissemination, reception, and consumption from traditional mass media—such as newspapers, radio, and television—to social platforms operated by large Internet companies, the identity of platform hot topic operators remains underexplored. This article takes platform hot topic operators in large Internet companies whose work content is partially similar to that of professional journalists as the research object. Using an analytical framework that contrasts the two roles, this study builds on existing research approaches that summarize identity cognition based on work routines. Expand the existing discussion with the core concepts of “professional identity” and “self-identity”. This article finds that platform hot topic operators mainly play the role of “liaisons” to connect internal and external media, “traders” to complete assessment indicators, and “analysts” to find work patterns. These three main types of work not only objectively create professional dilemmas for platform hot topic operators in terms of discourse resources and action limit, but also cause them to classify themselves into the buzzword of “beating worrs”. This article further points out that at a more macro level, first of all, this negative ident fication reflects the structural nature of “inside and outside the system”, “the overall goal of the platform and the individual positioning of practitioners” of the existence of socialized platforms dominated by commercialism. Secondly, compared with the ideal-biased “homogenous identity cognition” of professional journalist as the frame of reference, the platform hot topic operators form “heterogeneous identity cognition” with realistic bias, and “professional” goals and “self” cogniion have emerged. A gap that is difficult to bridge. This provides valuable empirical material for further thinking about the relationship between platforms and journalism.
  • The Meida Materialism of Insubstance: Rethinking the Materiality of Media in Kittler’s View
    GUO Xiaoan SONG Jiwen
    2024, 46(10): 71-92.
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    Friedrich Kittler’s media materialism is an insubstantial materialism. From the discourse network 1800 to 1900, is also a shift from the “materiality of voice” to the “materiality of inscription”. The media in Kittler’s concern exists in the insubstantial signification and is constructed on the “materiality of language” in (Post-)structuralism. In Discourse Network 1800, the “minimal signified” of voice is directly linked to meaning and the subject, and signification does not need to be “mediated” by meida, which does not yet exist; in Discourse Network 1900, the transcendental signified is negated by technological media, anti-metaphysics, and psychophysiology experimentation, and signification has to pass through the media of the signifier and becomes a meaningless “game” in the sliding of signifying chain. The “repetition” of the “materiality of inscription” makes the media in signification visible in different empirical domains such as literature, art, science and technology, and it is in this process that the tangible, solid media as material becomes visible. Kittler’s so-called media materiality is not the materiality of the media at all, but rather the break of the “materiality of language” that produced the media. Therefore, when we trace the true meaning of media materiality in Kittler’s view, and clarify the complex relationship between the concepts of matter and materiality, media and material media, we will find that what is really worthy of our consideration in Kittler’s case is the materiality of insubstantial linguistic structure, symbolic form, or significaiton. It is on the basis of insubstantial media materialism that we can really open up the rich imagination of materiality.
  • Platformized Migration: An Exploratory Study of Food Delivery Vendors in the Gig Economy
    JIANG Xiaomei JI Deqiang
    2024, 46(10): 93-118.
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    In contrast to the well-documented experiences of delivery riders in the gig economy, the struggles of food delivery vendors remain underexplored. This study focuses on delivery vendors in Beijing’s Songjiazhuang area, examining their platform labor experiences and urban migration patterns using grounded theory and field observations. The study finds the nature of the online on-demand market is such that it is more advantageous to be in the big cities in order to gain access to orders, but the urban-rural migration triggered by the shift in production will lead to new problems of social integration. The research introduces the concept of “platformized migration,” which is a strategy of labourer self-conditioning that caters to the operating mechanisms of the platform economy, in order to reveal the breadth and depth of the penetration of platform logic into the city. This concept captures the dual processes of “digital migration”-the shift from traditional restaurant models to online-only delivery businesses and “physical migration,” where vendors relocate to urban areas to secure more orders. The study proposes the “platform migration” framework, which encompasses both human and non-human factors, helps broaden our empirical understanding of the interconnectedness of platforms, labor, and urban spaces, offering new insights into the dynamics of the gig economy and platform labor.
  • The Cultural Politics of Clothing: The Modern Emergence and its Boundary-Setting Practices of Hanfu as a “Mediating Object”
    JI Fangfang
    2024, 46(10): 119-138.
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    From merely being discussed online to being seen everywhere on the streets, Hanfu culture catches the public attention and becomes the subject of youth culture research. The article believes that in order to understand the tensions contained in Hanfu as a cultural phenomenon, we first need to regard Hanfu as a “mediating object” and studies its modern emergence and the social relations its connects. Secondly, it is necessary to bring in the theoretical perspective of boundary research to reveal the inner dynamics of Hanfu practice as a “reinvented tradition”, and capture clues about its directions.
  • The “Self-Deportation” of Technical Geniuses: “Boundary Reversal” in the Daily Practice of Algorithm Programmers
    ZHANG Meng
    2024, 46(10): 139-163.
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    In everyday practice, the concept of boundaries is important, as it not only determines the allocation of resources for daily activities but also shapes the development trajectory of the social world. This paper addresses the issue of what constitutes the essence of boundaries when they are inscribed within algorithms. How do programmers engage with algorithmic practices to define and produce these boundaries? The research argues that algorithm programmers, as “technical experts”, pursue the indisputability of processes, the efficacy of tool models, and the coherence of technical cognition. The collective identity of “technical genius” represents a profound commitment that they make to both technology and organization, thereby expanding the technical authority of programmers through the establishment of social boundaries. However, programmers, technical perceptions are grounded not in a utopian foundation but rather on material rewards. Corporations encourage the passionate daily contributions of technical personnel through promises of wealth, ofen overlooking the rapid devaluation of their self-worth. Algorithm programmers reduce the expression of their skills and professional identity to the optimization of data metrics and models, conforming to standardized organizational practices and uncritically adopting vibrant user experiences. The “technical geniuses” do not become just arbiters of societal judgment, akin to cogs in the machine of algorithms. When their value is eventually depleted by the organization, they become a surplus category in the grand division of labor in technology. Laid-off programmers have to re-enter society to find positions, a mobility not personally desired but forced by the need to be revalued and ranked amid social competition. The collective technical aggregation fails to generate additional individual vitality. The boundary work and boundary objects undergo a process of reversal.
  • Some Introductory Thoughts on the Future of Media and Communications
    Written by DAVID Morley Translated by WANG Xin
    2024, 46(10): 164-176.
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    In recent years, media studies have often focused on how contemporary digital technologies are reshaping both societies and individual consciousness. These issues inevitably raise difficult questions about the relationship of communications, media and transport and the gains and losses consequent upon media-centric perspectives. In this context, we have to ask how our field of study should be defined in relation to the disciplines of media studies, communications, cultural studies, transport geography and mobility studies and what kind of disciplinary boundaries we want to establish or transcend. All this also raises issues about historical periodisation, and how best to conceptualise both breaks and continuities between eras. Here, I argue that we need to reverse the usual perspective on the effects of technologies and ask to what questions new technologies are the answers? In doing so, it is useful to highlight the specific characteristics of the de-regulated Post-Fordist societies which set the conditions of operation of the media of the rich northern temperate zone which then tend to provide a universalised template for many analyses. Thus, we evidently also need to consider questions of the `De-Westernising` of the field and about how the specificities of the post-Covid pandemic period in which we live, serve to determine the context of contemporary forms of communication.