Image source @ Visual China
Wen | Hedgehog Commune, the author | Jiaxuan, the director of the garden, the editor | the director of the garden
On the afternoon of March 21, 2022, Flight MU5735 of China Eastern Airlines crashed in TengXian County, Wuzhou City, Guangxi Province, causing a shock to the whole network.
The entry for flight MU5735 has always been on the hot search list of various social platforms, and the public has always paid attention to the latest news delivered at the scene of the air crash, the search and rescue of personnel, and the progress of accident investigation. Rescue troops, special working groups, medical personnel and psychological experts rushed to the scene at the first time; media practitioners also took urgent action to continuously collect relevant information about the accident, confirm and verify the reliability and accuracy of the information, and timely convey it to the outside world.
However, in the Internet era when everyone is a creator, in the face of painful air disasters, some discordant voices are also particularly "harsh".
The news that a passenger escaped a disaster because he did not board the plane was reported on the Internet, and many people posted screenshots of the refund for a while, saying that they were the "lucky ones". Individual users, self-media marketing numbers, and a small number of enterprises take the opportunity to rub the traffic of the air disaster and take advantage of the public's attention to the disaster to divert traffic. Humanity is the most prominent in disasters. Whether it is an individual or a company, when it chooses to spread rumors, take advantage of the opportunity to drain the flow, and use the disaster for "content marketing", it is doomed to lose its humanity, "the face is not wanted".
Who is in the consumer disaster?
The "consumption" of disasters by some organizations or their staff has become a public nuisance.
"I brush myself" series
It is understood that Xiaobai evaluation is the head of digital content self-media, currently has 3.377 million fans on Weibo, and the daily release content is technology digital product evaluation, product information, science and technology circle information and so on. After the article caused controversy, Xiaobai Review deleted the official account article and issued an apology note on the official Weibo. The apology statement said that it is seriously inappropriate to put the sudden accident news and information news together, there is a problem of not being afraid of the accident enough, the attitude is not serious enough, and the editor of the current public account has been suspended, and Xiao Bai himself, as the channel manager, has the problem of audit negligence and is suspended for 3 months.
The editor of the current issue of graphics also issued a long public apology, saying that he accepted all criticism, and at the same time explained the statement of "rubbing the air disaster traffic", because "I was particularly shocked and concerned after seeing it, and then I did not think much about it and directly chose to insert the breaking major news into the beginning of the information that was originally ready to be pushed on the day, just want to report as a major emergency and have no other ideas, now look at this is a very significant dereliction of duty." ”
But it is obvious that most netizens do not buy such an explanation. One of the important reasons is that at the time node of the 5.1-magnitude earthquake in Qinghai on May 22, 2021, the Xiaobai evaluator micro-forwarded the CCTV news report and commented: "... This and this... Is it to replace the X-axis vibration motor for pre-market testing? This comment has also been angrily denounced as "overturning", "indifference" and "eyeballs".
In this air disaster incident, Xiaobai evaluation once again appeared content controversy, and a large number of netizens regarded it as a "habitual offender" who rubbed the disaster traffic. On March 22, the Xiaobai Evaluation Public Account has been subjected to a ladder processing by the WeChat public platform in accordance with the interim regulations on the development and management of public information services of instant messaging tools due to complaints and suspected of various violations, and its account cannot be searched in WeChat at present, but it can be searched for articles it has published, and users who have been concerned can still open and read it normally.
After the air crash, Shanxi Shanjiangcun Real Estate Development Co., Ltd. used the hot news of the accident to release a "New Fudi" real estate publicity advertisement containing event elements, which caused netizens to question.
Image source @ Jinzhong market supervision public number
After the situation was exposed, law enforcement officers went to investigate overnight. According to the official notice of Jinzhong Market Supervision, the advertisement was jointly produced by the designer of the planning department of Tiansen Group after the marketing publicist Chen Mou saw the report of the flight crash, and publicized and released it through the WeChat circle of friends. At present, the Market Supervision Bureau has filed a case against the company and will deal with the company strictly and quickly in accordance with the law.
The brand Ai green mattress also exposed a scene that made netizens angry in this disaster. A clerk of Ai Lu published a marketing advertisement in the circle of friends on the grounds of the air crash: "The plane accident occurred, the whole circle of friends is on fire, you are so concerned about others, why don't you care about yourself?" And after this paragraph, the promotion of Ailu's mattress products.
In the mattress industry, Ai Lu can be called the three "top-notch" American brands with simmons and Sealy, and the price is often as high as tens of thousands of yuan. Afterwards, the staff member and the official American Ai green mattress issued an apology statement.
Anxiety and empathy, "never out of date" traffic harvesting
Compared with the organized use of disaster events for marketing and drainage, some individual behaviors have also caused psychological discomfort to the public.
An employee of an insurance company claimed on Weibo that soon after the company learned of the crash, it issued a series of orders requiring employees everywhere not to use hot events to sell insurance services to customers.
But there are too many practitioners in this industry, or some people send circles of friends faster than the company's strict orders, we can always see the circle of friends of insurance practitioners forwarding information such as "tomorrow and accidents do not know which one comes first" and "buy insurance before flying".
A widely circulated screenshot of the circle of friends shows that someone is selling a type of insurance called "Huaxia Protective Body", saying that "China Eastern Airlines 737 accident high accident Huaxia Protection You deserve it." The hedgehog commune's inquiry found that Huaxia Insurance Company did have an insurance with the full name of "Huaxia Protective Body", and the high amount of protection was the focus of its external publicity and sales.
For many sellers in the insurance industry, taking advantage of any sad occasion to create anxiety opportunities for "content marketing" has long been a familiar routine.
However, in the eyes of the outside world, practitioners in the insurance and wealth management industries are selling their own business at this time, which not only does not arouse their desire for anxiety, but also causes people to be extremely disgusted.
In addition to using disaster events to promote themselves, there are also accounts that use dramatic plots such as so-called "not boarding the plane" to drain the flow, which also makes people feel uncomfortable.
After the facts of the disaster were confirmed, nearly 20 people who claimed not to have boarded the plane for various reasons appeared in a short period of time. In the end, it could only be confirmed that 2 people were due to weather reasons or early refunds, passing by the disaster.
Fabricating facts and attracting attention cannot directly bring economic benefits, but it can use people's empathy for disasters to attract traffic and grow fans. In the information environment that is difficult to distinguish between true and false in the short time after the disaster, people's psychology is easily affected by these dramatic plots, so that traffic is focused on these contents with "bizarre experiences".
After people have eased up from the impact of the disaster, it is not difficult to find that a considerable number of self-proclaimed "unboarded" content cannot be scrutinized. However, the pollution of the information environment has been caused, compared with the clever marketing of merchants and individuals, no matter what the purpose, making up false information to attract traffic in a disaster moment is a more bad behavior.
Others may inadvertently let some old videos also be mixed with the video of the accident scene to spread. In the era when short videos have become the main force of information dissemination, people often confuse videos of similar events. Compared with the graphics, the amount of work to query the source and source of a video is several orders of magnitude more, and for ordinary users, it is naturally impossible to distinguish whether the video content is a work of flower transfer.
Even professional video information producers can hardly make judgments in a short period of time. Not pursuing temporary traffic, and letting videos that cannot be fully confirmed to be true or false "fly" for a while, is what content producers should do at extraordinary moments.
The boundaries of content, the ethics of traffic
Internet content platforms quickly made a statement after the crash: crack down on illegal accounts that rubbed traffic and clean up fake content.
Among the four mainstream content platforms of Kuaishou, Douyin, Weibo and WeChat, the fastest action is Douyin.
Image source @ Douyin Security Center public number
At 18:34 on March 21, the "Douyin Security Center" issued an announcement on the WeChat public account, reminding users that "the release of relevant information and content on the platform should abide by the principles of truth and objectivity, and do not use hot events to rub hot and play with stems, let alone take the initiative to provoke and participate in the relevant personnel of the Internet violence." Douyin will also use the strategy model + technical means to strictly control, such as finding that someone tries to rub hot spots, eyeballs, and attract attention, it will be punished with banning words or even banning accounts depending on the severity of the situation." On March 22, Douyin said it had banned 22 illegal accounts.
The second is Kuaishou. At 19:25 on March 21, the "Kuaishou Violation Announcement" account released a long chart on the Kuaishou platform, reminding users that "the content posted should adhere to the principle of truth and objectivity" and "I hope that everyone will speak rationally and wait for the official final result." And encourage users to "publish real and valuable content to deliver warm and positive energy." On March 22, Kuaishou said it handled 32 illegal accounts and 2,934 illegal videos.
It was followed by Weibo. At 19:40 on March 21, weibo official account @ Weibo administrator said, "During the inspection, it was found that a very few users posted improper remarks such as schadenfreude and ridicule disaster, which the station firmly opposed and dealt with seriously." According to the "Weibo Community Convention" and other relevant regulations, 25 accounts were punished with a 30-day to permanent ban on speech according to the degree, and cleaned up the illegal content.
On the afternoon of March 22, Weibo took further action, saying that it had shut down and disposed of 876 seriously violated accounts, and cleaned up 1,482 illegal contents such as ridiculing disasters, publishing and disseminating false information, brushing volume and rubbing heat, and malicious marketing.
In addition, "in order to ensure the authenticity and transparency of information in the China Eastern Airlines incident", the "function of displaying the ownership of the blog IP" launched during the Russian-Ukrainian conflict was also used in some Weibo content involving the China Eastern Airlines incident.
The WeChat Security Center account "WeChat 110" sent a push at 22:58 on the night of March 21, saying that it was found that individual users used the incident to rub heat and traffic, and by piecing together old news, provoking antagonism, and releasing false information to mislead the public." And dealt with a number of illegal accounts.
Under the urgent action of Internet content platforms, the harm of rubbing heat and false information is limited to a controllable degree. It also clearly tells the relevant producers what is the boundaries of the content and what is the ethics of traffic.
But there are still some things that are still in a relative "ambiguous zone".
For example, blogger @宷狠红 is confused by the value of some content that describes the lives of the victims: most of the content is not allowed by the family, but "comes from the exposure of personal information on social networking sites." It is undeniable that such content can provide users with empathetic "emotional value", which still has some significance at special moments. But content creators need to think about it and shouldn't stop there.
For users, the ubiquitous short videos and social media have brought everyone closer to the disaster scene with infinite detail and extremely high speed. A few inches of mobile phone screen, so that the "distant cry" into a near-hand Shuluo field, which has never been seen before in the mobile Internet era.
How to make content that respects facts, respects life, and has its unique value from the user's point of view, whether it comes from a brand or an institution, or an individual content creator, needs to be considered.