Big data transforms traditional content production

The operation mode of traditional media is undergoing profound changes. "Content is the king and big data technology is the support" can be said to be an effective way to transform traditional media. Since this year, more and more traditional media have entered the big data industry, and the use of big data technology is also seen as the key factor to improve the competitiveness of the traditional media industry in the future. How can we accurately locate and master the personalized needs of readers and audiences through data mining and other methods? How can we achieve intelligent matching between information and audience's personalized and customized needs at low cost through technical means? This report attempts to sort out and discuss the practical problems faced by the media industry and urgently needed to be solved, with a view to promoting the development of media integration.
Mention of "big data" is not new to many people now. In recent years, this word has been frequently mentioned in different industries and fields, and has had an impact on people's lives. This influence is equally profound in the media industry.
Some people say that big data is the fourth factor of production, while others predict that the value of big data in the future will exceed oil and become the new "energy" in the future. So, what is big data, what profound changes it has brought to the media industry, and where should the news report in the era of big data go?
What is "big data" in your eyes?
"Like a mass of chaotic stones and stones, data mining is to extract gold, iron and even diamonds from this mass of stones and stones." Ye Zhenzhen, general manager of the People's Daily Media Technology Company, used an image metaphor to describe the concept of big data in his eyes.
In the data news laboratory of the People's Daily Media Technology Company, when we are discussing internally, Ye Zhenzhen often interrupts his colleagues and says, "This is not big data. Don't use it randomly. We need to be strict." The reason for this is that in Ye Zhenzhen's view, many people in the big data boom haven't clarified the concept, Products based on small data such as Excel data or statistical data are often labeled as big data. Ye Zhenzhen believes that the initial chaos that can extract gold or diamonds from it is big data.
As the founder of the ninth power big data and the executive president of Guiyang Big Data Exchange, Wang Sanshou felt the change of everyone's understanding of big data: from 2010 to 2012, many people believed that big data was the storage of servers; From 2012 to 2013, people believed that big data existed in Excel tables; In 2014, everyone's understanding of big data rose to statistical data... until today, big data has been regarded as "gold" and "oil". "I think big data is neither oil nor gold." In Wang Sanshou's view, oil and gold are non-renewable resources, while data is just a kind of endless and endless resources.
Even in academic circles, there is no unified consensus on the discussion of big data. Meng Wei, director of the Network New Media Research Office of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that from a micro perspective, big data is based on cloud computing, and is the movement of information in physical space and the projection of information into digital space. In the medium term, big data is a new factor of production. It is a new productive force and a fundamental force of production relations. This is also true for news communication. On the macro level, it is actually an improvement of epistemology. According to big data, we can reposition our perspective of seeing and understanding the world.
What changes have brought to the media industry?
The transformation brought by big data has pushed the media industry in transition to the wind. Whether it is traditional mainstream media, emerging media or portal websites, they are constantly trying to use big data to make a new interpretation of news reports.
"One of the biggest changes in the application of big data in the field of news is the data style of data news." In Meng Wei's view, the life of news lies in the truth. As a technical and scientific method, big data provides a good means for audiences to get closer to real and objective news.
In the field of news production, that is to say, in the process of news production, Meng Wei believes that the traditional production of news content is dominated by manual production. Data news is not an extension of previous accurate news or computer-assisted news reports, but can generate a new news style and achieve a qualitative change in the process of data accumulation and mining. "That is to say, the change in content production brought by data news is far greater than the concept of using only technical means to help us produce news," said Meng Wei.
Recently, the People's Daily Media Technology Co., Ltd. and Qunar cooperated to conduct a survey on the popularity of Chinese parent-child tourism, and found that Thailand rose from the original lower position to the first. When exploring the causes of this phenomenon, if we follow the traditional news production model, the sampling in the form of interviews with tourists and questionnaires will be more limited. However, they found a key word - "smile" by analyzing the data captured by the background of the tourism platform. Through big data, we can find that many people like to travel to Thailand not because of the beautiful beaches and scenery, but because of the friendly and sincere smile of Thai people. Through this example, Ye Zhenzhen wanted to show that the data news usually said does not necessarily have numbers. In addition, products based on digital news often have interactive consumption patterns, participation and personalization. For example, the data news "Who is representing me" during this year's NPC and CPPCC sessions - through capturing the basic data of NPC delegates into a database, netizens can find the most matching NPC delegates by entering their own information.
"This is the change and improvement of data news to traditional news, and one of the important points is its impact on the application of data, the news of production, and the personal relevance." Meng Wei said that the sources of data news have many components, but how to use various kinds of data to tell stories, and tell them more in-depth and better, is the most important thing to achieve the communication effect after the production of data news.
Wang Sanshou said that without the support of big data, many news would be difficult to present. For example, in the news of the sodium cyanide explosion in Tianjin, after entering "sodium cyanide" in the database, you will be told the distribution of the sodium cyanide industry in China in a second, which province, which city and which street these companies are located in, when each sodium cyanide company will be registered, and how big each sodium cyanide company will be in the end... This is hard to imagine in traditional news reports. In the words of Wang Sanshou, the relationship between big data and news reporting is not that who changed who, but that the method of news reporting has changed through big data.
How to deal with the relationship with big data?
Compared with human, the processing capacity of machines for big data naturally ranks far above. Will machine news replace traditional news reports in the future? In the era of big data, what challenges will media people face and how to deal with them?
In Meng Wei's view, under the data news environment, there are two main challenges for media people: first, whether AI can replace the potential of human intelligence is not an absolute answer; Second, people's cultural and professional qualities will become the core elements of competition with AI in the future.
Although in the view of many people, it is difficult to realize that AI completely replaces traditional reports. But it also means that it is not impossible. Wang Sanshou uses an example to illustrate that people who speculate in stocks know that the most important thing for people who do high-frequency trading on Wall Street is to quickly obtain information within 50 words in a very short time. The difference between loss and gain is likely to be 0.1 and 0.01 seconds. Such work is absolutely difficult to be completed manually. Now on Wall Street in the United States, an AI machine can learn and extract 50 words of key information in one second for a 5000 word message.
Ye Zhenzhen is also cautious about whether AI will replace reporters in writing. He believed that when we fully understand the mechanism behind AI, what seems impossible at present may not be impossible. "Why can't we write creative words, write comments, and have ethics recognized by human beings reflected in its expression?" Ye Zhenzhen said that after trying a variety of AI products, he increasingly believed that some things would be far beyond the original imagination. "As long as human society is making sound and spreading in the virtual world, machines can learn, but they have not yet developed in this direction," said Ye Zhenzhen.
In fact, everyone understands the meaning behind the ambitious sentence "data news is the future". However, it is not easy to get involved in data news. Meng Wei believes that in the process of making data news, in addition to the difficulties in data source and data quality, capital and technology will also be important aspects that will perplex the media. In addition, the technical literacy of media people also needs to be improved. In the summary of data production process, large multimedia people have no knowledge or little knowledge about simple data acquisition, data cleaning, data analysis, mining and the final generation technology, which is also the reason for our fear of data technology today and even data barriers.
In this regard, Meng Wei believes that media people should pay attention to the cultivation of data literacy. Of course, while paying attention to data literacy, humanistic literacy cannot be relaxed. Because, in the network media, when some "headline party" or large-scale things cannot be avoided through technical settings, as professionals, they need scientific humanistic quality and professionalism, which also need to be strengthened.
Brainstorm
Yu Guoming, Executive Dean of School of Journalism and Communication, Beijing Normal University:
Big data news is a news report based on big data analysis thinking. It is a higher-level form of data-driven news and represents a trend of news development in the future. At present, big data news is mostly in the experimental stage. It is expected that the large-scale production of big data news will gradually come after 2020 or later.
Wang Sanshou, founder of nine-power big data:
In the face of the impact of new technology and the comprehensive transformation of media, big data is a vent in the media industry. The four functions of big data - intelligent analysis, early warning, prediction and decision-making - will completely change the content production process and presentation form of traditional news.
Lang Qingping, CEO of Qingbo Big Data:
The news value can be continuously amplified through big data, which has penetrated into the content production of new media. Big data promotes the integrated development of media, analyzes its own operations with data, classifies official account in various industries, and pinpoints its own positioning through data, which can help media build a complete chain from production to marketing, as well as scene mining, user positioning, personalized services, etc.