How should the media deal with "big data" technology?

In the 2011, the West's theory of "big data" swept through the intelligentsia like a whirlwind, with a succession of scholarly discussions of big data. Media fiery stir, all kinds of alarmist conclusions, full of all kinds of myths, Google has 13多亿条 this aspect of the reports and comments. China's IT industry and the press also carried out a discussion, and published a number of articles, the western "data-driven News" (Data-driven journalism), "data to determine the freedom of speech" (allowing to speak freely) of the argument in the domestic popular. Many articles claim that if the media are not familiar with and control the torrent of large data, it will lead to doom, and the inherent laws of news reporting will be overturned.

The fiction of the "Big Data Age"

The concept of "big Data Age" was first proposed by McKinsey, a world-renowned consulting firm (MGI). McKinsey said in its study that the volume of data in our world has exploded, and the analysis of large data will be the basis of competition to support new productivity growth. Data is becoming a factor of production, and the use of massive data technology will herald a new wave of productivity growth and a rise in the consumer surplus.

Does large data technology bring the above changes in society mean the beginning of a new era? Is there a fundamental difference between the big data age and the information age?

If the concept of "times" is used in the social civilization form, it means that the whole face of the society is changed by material production, political system or cultural change in a certain time and space. Although people can mark the era of popular thought or behavior at a certain stage, it is by no means a rigorous scientific concept, but merely a habitual salutation. History, the human society has appeared in the Stone Age, the Copper Age, the bronze time, the Iron Age, the steam age, the electric age, the age of ignorance, the Age of Enlightenment, the age of slavery, the feudal system era, the capitalist era, the socialist era, all refers to the material production, political system or Time is not the same as the age, nor any new gadgets, the emergence of a universal, opened a new era door.

Large data is a subset of information technology, only the statistical analysis method of mass information, which does not have the nature of material production and social management, so it does not have a brand-new characteristic of the times. As an integral part of the information economy era, large data does not exceed the information production form of "promoting product circulation by data circulation, information technology and information labor occupying the huge proportion of the whole economy". It is only one of the characteristics of the information age, not a new economic form or social formation, so the concept of a large data age is full of fiction.

"Big data is turning us into new species," says one domestic it insider. First of all, the big data changed our way of thinking, and let us from the cascade thinking of causality into the parallel thinking of correlation. Second, large data changes our production mode, the production of material products take a backseat, the processing of information products will become the main production activities. Third, big data has changed our way of life, and our spiritual and physical worlds will be built on big data. "④ This conclusion is that the big data as a feature of the times, the taste of myth is strong." First, with the Earth's temperature, magnetic field, atmospheric oxygen content and ultraviolet rays unchanged, we cannot become a new species, even if it takes millions of years to change. Second, large data cannot make the production of material products relegated to the second place. We can only rely on food, water, houses, clothing, air and transportation and other substances to survive, the production of material products always in the first place, the development of large data technology or processing information products are to improve the production efficiency and quality of material products, never a leading position. Large data itself can neither satisfy hunger nor allow people to live in a secure home.

Meiernberg and Kukir The more absurd conclusion: "The biggest shift in the big data age is to give up the desire for causation and instead focus on the various relationships of society." As long as you know what ' is ' and don't need to know ' why '. This has subverted the human's thinking practice for thousands of years, and put forward new challenges to human cognition and the way of communication with the world. "⑤ if large data technology makes mankind only know what is", there is no longer the need to explore the objective laws-to seek "why", then large data can only let people's understanding stay in the surface phenomenon of things, so that human beings to ignorance, so that the elimination of scientific research, ultimately lead to social retrogression So, what is the "time" weight of big data? In fact, the "Big Data" analysis platform not only lets people know what "is", but also sometimes lets people know "why", otherwise there is no significant instrumental value, especially for the news media.

Two sides of "big data"

Big data is becoming a craze, not only in the IT industry, but also in the political, commercial, social and other fields of technology. Thinking about its model and how to apply it has become the strongest sound of the new round of technological change. But there are two sides to the big data technology.

On the positive side, large data has indeed become the main line of the data kingdom, and is the next major object of information research. Mass media, social media and various economic and social sectors how to use large data, correct assessment of the commercial value of large data, building large data of emerging industries, nurturing large data professionals, will greatly promote social change and economic development. Gari Kim, a sociology professor at Harvard University, said: "This is a revolution, and huge data resources have led to a process of quantification in all areas, whether academia, business or government." "

The virtual world has inexhaustible resources, and data can be transformed into assets and wealth. It is predicted that the application of large data technology in the U.S. medical services alone will create a value of around $300 billion a year, and the ultimate value of global personal location services would be $ more than 700 billion trillion. Every day, various organizations, individuals and a large number of media divergent pictures, documents, video and speech, the chaos, cycle, human has long been unable to control. And this information is the real record of human activities, a large number from the human psychological level and the insider of social organization, through large data analysis of human beings are fully possible to understand the complex, hidden social and natural phenomena, so that scientific research into a rapid development period, the past unknown areas may be completely solved by mankind.

From the negative side, large data technology is not omnipotent, can not solve all problems, it is only a quantitative means of decision-making. To understand the right and wrong of things and to follow the humanistic spirit is a more important prerequisite. Without this premise, large data is not only useless, but it can also seek supporting data for fallacies.

Some articles say: "The era of large data is actually to carry forward the spirit of the rational era ..." The United States is doing a lot better in this area, with data analysis, data making and data innovation in the U.S. government. "⑦ The United States does value data, it has been a more than 80-year tradition to study social issues with polls or other empirical surveys," he said. But the 2008 financial crisis has been over 5 years, its economic decisions do not make it out of the woods, and many of the data collected by its intelligence services are false (for example, Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the provision of false information to the International Atomic Energy Agency, etc.); Successive administrations in the United States have made major mistakes. The American Gallup poll predicts that the U.S. general election usually collects and analyzes Chendovan data every time, but predicts errors many times. The large data itself is not equal to rationality, decision based on data analysis rather than experience and intuition, is a rational expression, but greater rationality is the human law. That is to pay attention to the general requirements of the people, to uphold the dignity and culture of all nationalities, respect for human freedom, equality and rights. The failure to respect the history and customs of other nationalities, to practise racial discrimination, to know the interests of the country and not to take into account the interests of others, has caused the United States Government to suffer setbacks in internal and external affairs, causing irreparable harm to the common people of some countries (such as the indiscriminate killing of civilians).

Following the friendly principles of social ethics, humanitarianism, justice and justice, equality and mutual benefit, is the guideline of analyzing data. Data is a category, it is true or not, for the benefit of the whole society, which is the majority of people support, in favor of the people who are in favor of the class and so on, the data itself there is a certain ambiguity. To extract large data on social problems, mainly to understand the views of the vast majority of people, based on the people are satisfied with the conclusion, but the number of large data and people is not exactly the same. It is not enough to rely on the data for the media to reflect mainstream opinion and to make accurate and accurate reports.

The vast amount of information provided by the Internet, mass media and social media on a daily basis is heavily redundant, false and harmful, with information and images that violate other people's right to privacy, survival and mental health are rampant and "of low value." Human not only can not put large data as a treasure, but also to calmly look at the two sides of the data, discard harmful and useless information, so that data analysis on the value and legal level, avoid wasting professional time and energy.

Machine storage and analysis is difficult to contain a few 1 billion megabytes of data, even if the data is stored, professionals can not fully access, delete and forget worthless, irrelevant information is the important principle of processing large data. As Meiernberg in the book "Deleting: The forgotten virtues of the digital age," digital technology and global networks are overriding, so that we forget our natural capabilities and we have to get back to forgetting. The measures that human should take are "digital control, protection of information privacy, construction of digital privacy infrastructure, adjustment of the existing cognition of mankind, building benign information ecology, complete context", "the choice of large data" is to leave the meaning of the left, meaningless to remove. Only by understanding what is needed in large data, and how to judge it, can analogy understand why it is necessary to remove unwanted. "⑧

Iii. the media's response to the "Big data" technology

News media Control Large data is an important way to find news. The future news material mainly comes from the internet, the thing networking and the social media, although the news information is endless, but the good and the mixed, the cloud computing "purification" is chooses the news fact the main means. Daily processing of "information shoots" (just unearthed new data), so that news material to maintain the greatest freshness, aggravated the media work of tension, a little snub, more massive information backlog, the media plunged into the abyss of data and suffocation.

News data is constantly produced, showing dispersion, spread state, and inclusion in a large number of other data, news media processing data identification, precision rate is the main performance of processing information. "Purification" is the objective of cognitive objective world, the extraction of news information should be comprehensive and real-time, after purification and purification, to achieve the accuracy of the news facts. The news material in the big data is not the core resource, only the news "blank", or "second-hand resources". For the local news, reporters of a large number of field interviews, access to hand still indispensable, large media still need to foreign, off-site dispatch resident reporters.

In large data statistics, data-frequency events contain news value, so that journalists may find big news. An event, a phenomenon is not a news, the value is not worth reporting, not only according to the data, more important is based on the news value theory to make judgments. The news value theory is the summary of the report law, the large data investigation not only cannot replace it, but also can make the correct cognizance by its instruction. The importance, freshness, fun or proximity of news facts can derive the value of news, but not the value of news itself. News value elements are useful, beneficial and effective to the audience, including the guidance of the audience's life, to improve the audience's ideological and moral motivation and to cultivate the audience's temperament of entertainment and satisfaction. These three news values become the "engines" of news data analysis, rather than simply determining the news value with the data it appears.

Let the reporter state a little-known event (story) and look for a new perspective, need a complete story, large data can reproduce this story, especially to provide personalized details. The database can be transformed into any form of journalistic writing, creating a clear description of the news in a visual format. Storytelling elements can be used to illustrate the outcome of an event, or to detect omissions or misleading by a journalist's previous judgment. A story is verifiable, by examining the data source, dataset, data quality, and data format, and discovering the false parts of the event (story) that may be contained, but it is difficult to determine which specific facts and details are false. Only by verifying the events in the field can we grasp the authenticity of the news more realistically, expect the data to provide complete authenticity and contain too much risk.

More importantly, the large data on the news events have a variety of judgments and conclusions, whether can provide ideas, especially the right ideas, is undoubtedly negative. It is impossible to make an arbitrary conclusion: large data is the universal Judge of Truth. The news media not only need to make the truth judgment to the thought that the big data provides, but also need to think independently, and follow the principle of the truth of the news to write the exclusive comment. German scholar Herman Maine once said: "Respect for the truth, the public to make a true report, is the highest standards of the press." "The truth of ⑨ News is based on reality and objectivity, but it is not true and objective itself, it is verified in the scientific practice." The truth of Human justice and society, the repeated weighing of how to report can be harmless to humans. Jack Kesser, a prominent French journalist, stressed: "The question of truth is fairly simple, a journalist must tell the truth, and a journalist who distorts facts or betrays truth is unworthy of this profession." But should anyone who is silent about truth be condemned? In order to answer these questions, we ask not only the information to be accurate, but also whether the information is appropriate. "⑩ for this, large data can only provide some reference, the correct value of the media is the first."