Page 179 - Feasibility Study of New Media Technology on Constructing Online Public Sphere

Chapter 6. The Xiamen PX plant event

because massive amount of news appears every day, and a good editor needs to have

the ability to find ‘good’ news that worth being the spotlight and recommend it to the
audiences. Interviewee 7 also indicated that the:
‘clickbait triggers audience’s curiosity when browsing the internet, leads them to
click the button, and consume the news. It is an inevitable trend in the digital age in
32
which people are surrounded with segmented information’ .
Media service providers need such methods to maintain the sustainable devel-
opment of the company, but it is ethically acceptable only under the condition that the
headline tells the facts regardless of what kind of word game is applied. It merely influ-

ences the audience’s decision as information consumers. Manipulating the wording in
the headline to intentionally guide public opinion towards a social event is irresponsi-
ble and unethical for media practitioners. These are all the controllable factors from the
media market side. For the government, it is acceptable that media companies are using
these techniques for profit as long as they keep a distance from the bottom line. It was

an unwritten agreement between the media companies and the government until the
boom of user-generated content in Web 2.0.
Taking blogs as an example, in principle, bloggers can freely write articles and

post commentaries on blog sites. Service providers usually invite opinion leaders or
popular bloggers to their sites to attract audiences and increase the click-through rate.
Another intention is to use the bloggers’ opinions. Interviewee 6, who worked in a large
commercial blog site, indicated that this was achieved by the recommendation mech-
anism and use of visual effects to make the topic eye-catching. The government is in a

regulator position in the government-media interaction, but these methods that media
companies adopt imply that they do not always compromise with authority: ‘[t]hey are
probing the government’s reaction through these tricks and activities within the tolerant

scope. Their attempts cannot cause hard conflicts between the government and media
33
companies (Interviewee 5)’ . Interviewee 1 also indicated that:
‘internet media companies would not arbitrarily publish sensitive information or

32 Translation provided by the author.
33 Translation provided by the author.

163
163