Let's take a look at the recent hot searches -
"So-and-so ate four leek boxes for breakfast", "caught plants and secretly drank water", "lazy sheep's parents love to sleep", "dig, dig, dig"...
Do you have such a feeling: at present, many Internet hotspots are very "nonsensical", making people scratch their heads, but they can always occupy the high ground of traffic and catch people's attention.
Implicit is a paradox. On the one hand, attention is extremely scarce, and many meaningful and vital interests of everyone are rarely paid attention to, and the flow is scarce; On the other hand, some chicken and dog fragments are popular, attracting a lot of attention, surging traffic, and ranking on the hot search list all year round.
This is abnormal, and it needs attention. We need to find out, what is the internal logic of the hot search on the spot? And how to break?
One
Combing found that the hot search of frivolous and undernourished has the following characteristics:
I don't understand. At present, the hot search lists of various social media are full of content such as "so-and-so has lost weight", "what did so-and-so do", "so-and-so drama exploded" and so and so are blown. Many people will ask when they look at the hot search list: who is this person, and who is that person? How can this matter also be on the hot search? For example, "Lin Xiao, you are really high-level scolding now" on the recent hot search, "man driving Bentley refueling was picked up and robbed of the watch", "Chen vinegar cola" and "500 yuan firecrackers finished in 3 seconds", which made many netizens scratch their heads. Things that could have been said in one or two sentences have become hot news, and reading it is equivalent to watching it for nothing.
Quite gossip. Take the hot search on a platform on July 10, 1/3 of the top 15 on the hot search list are related to celebrity gossip. For example, who has a beautiful shape, who has high appearance, who went to which city, who learned to ride a bicycle, etc., as well as all kinds of celebrity scandals to see you on Monday and Wednesday for a while, hot search is like an uninterrupted "star qualifying race", full of bloody gossip, film and television drama marketing and the like, current affairs news, serious topics are squeezed into the corner, invisible in the public eye.
High traffic. Some topics that are not popular themselves are not only on the hot search, but also attract great attention. For example, a dog topped the Weibo hot search list because it was kissed by a traffic star, and received 710 million views on a platform with nearly 600 million monthly active users. In Douyin, "a certain star laughs at himself and has no brains" has become the first hot search, and the marketing of a certain drama has become the second hot search, opening up a reading gap of nearly one million other social topics. According to data, in 2022, more than 110,000 topics will appear on the hot search list, and the top five on the list are all hot search topics such as TV dramas, sports, variety shows, and funny.
Two
Why can "frivolous" be on the hot search?
Traffic comes first. The reason is that the flow baton is an inescapable link. The essence of traffic is human attention. As people swipe their screens every day, platforms hope to cater to audiences and gain attention through eye-catching images, love-hate views, and sensor-stimulating content. Compared with serious content, it is light, interesting, easy to digest, easier to attract people's attention, and the platform has the motivation to push the flow. Many times, self-media, big V and even institutional media play the role of promoters driven by traffic.
Curious hearts. Some people say that everything has nothing to do with you, but it is the most arousing your curiosity. By discussing other people's affairs and various gossip under the hot search, and exchanging each other's views, I satisfied my curiosity and curiosity. By mastering and discussing other people's gossip and interesting facts, enjoying the feeling of being noticed and valued is also psychological compensation for one's own pursuit of attention. Therefore, even if it is a star trivia and anecdote that cannot be beaten, as long as we are not Internet "insulators", attention will always be attracted by these thin things.
Algorithm dependency. Algorithms are the basic premise of hot search for agenda setting. Taking the Weibo popularity calculation formula as an example, popularity = (search popularity + discussion popularity + spread popularity) x interaction rate. The Weibo platform calculates the topic and popularity every minute, and takes the top 50 topics for display, which shows that the hot search list setting does not look at whether the information is valuable, but only whether the information is hot.
Commercial kidnapping. Hot searches may not all be searched, topics can be marketed, hot searches can be bought and sold. According to media surveys, some hot search topics, from public relations companies planning themes, to wooing big Vs to promote the waves, to attracting netizens to watch and discuss, have formed an orderly industrial chain around hot searches. Spending money to buy hot searches, water army brushing hot spots, boring, vulgar topics can also occupy the traffic highland, "exchange silver for heat, earn silver with heat", so that hot searches can also become private goods "hypermarkets".
Three
On the hot search list, netizens forwarded, commented, and liked one by one, which to a considerable extent reflected what everyone behind the screen cared about most every day. Hot search, regarded by many as newsworthy vernier calipers, largely affects the direction of public opinion. But if the hot search list is overdrawn by bloody gossip, the truly valuable news and sharp voice will be drowned out.
For each of us, of course, there must be easy entertainment, but entertainment and entertainment will be like the warning in "Entertainment to Death", when all public discourse increasingly appears in the form of entertainment and becomes a cultural spirit, it will be a crisis of social development.
Why is the hot search list really hot? How can the content be more realistic?
Platforms can't just count profits and ignore responsibilities. As a product of commercial media, hot search has the characteristics of low threshold, many sources of information, and weak control, but it is an important channel for most people to screen news and information, and to a certain extent, it has obvious public media attributes. The economic interests in hot searches will affect the healthy and orderly dissemination of social information, and even have an important impact on the public opinion environment. All online platforms should shoulder the responsibility of "topic setting", grasp the correct orientation, take practical measures, and search the true face of the hot list to avoid the obliteration of truly valuable news and voices.
Netizens can't be busy eating melons and blindly following the trend. Sometimes, the hot spots we see are often recommended by algorithms, such as the Weibo comment display algorithm, and the comments with the highest number of likes will be at the top, but the popularity does not represent the value. Therefore, in the face of the indiscriminate bombardment of hot spots, you need to keep a clear head, select and distinguish them, and before each like, forward, and comment, you may wish to put a question mark in your heart, do not blindly believe in hot search content, and reduce dependence on hot search lists.
The media should occupy a card slot and strengthen guidance. Whether valuable content can be on the hot search is a test of whether institutional media has strong agenda-setting capabilities. In hot discussions, the mainstream media cannot use hot search as a ruler, and those who come will not refuse, let hot search kidnap the public opinion field. For the claims that are popular on the Internet, verification is required, and everyone cannot follow the clouds. Through in-depth restoration of reports, it injects authority and value into hot searches, guides the public to look at problems from a rational and comprehensive perspective, and sends real problems to hot searches.
Some people say, "We always know too much about hot searches and too little about ourselves and everything." "In the Internet era, our lives are inevitably deeply bound to all kinds of "hot searches" and "headlines", we must use this tool well, but do not be trapped by it, and put our curiosity and attention on more meaningful things.
Source: Qingdao Propaganda
Author: Zhang Zhimeng
Editor: Qiu Jieyi