Big Data Age: New media tasks and new roles for media people

Summary: The most insightful and controversial view of the big Data age: Big changes in life, work and thinking is that the biggest shift in the big data age is to give up the desire for causation and instead focus on the relationship. That means just knowing what "is" without needing to know why. This paper holds that understanding the correlation thinking mode of large data age and other essential factors, and then understanding the demand of high quality and certainty information in large data environment, is helpful to the traditional media to broaden their horizons and find a way to seek strategic breakthrough.

Key words: The role of traditional media media in large data age

Wen/Zhang Kunyang Xu Tieying

In the era of large data, it must be admitted that the pursuit of causality in the traditional media, such as the form has been outdated. No matter how good a journalist, their observation of things is subject to personal vision and position, even if it is relatively in-depth, may not be comprehensive, full. And with reporters in a certain view of the limited observation point of things on the observation and analysis of the difference is that the efficient processing of large-scale data can reveal a larger range or closer to the facts of the case, which also provides a basis for in-depth reporting, and thus revolutionize the media ecology.

The new transformation of the role of media man

Victor Schoenberg's large data thinking, that is, is no longer keen to look for causal relationships, but to find relationships between things. This view is intended to subvert the previous "limited" data era of information thinking concept. The deficiency of the traditional media in the information thinking is precisely: trees, trees. The pursuit of micro-precision, ignoring macro-grasp. Traditional media should have large data horizons. With this view, even if the focus on the "point" on the micro-problem, see the landscape will be different, not a solitary "point" of the meaning, but with "face" on the value of the "node."

As an example of a finalist in the world's first Data news prize, this is a budget calculator jointly produced by the BBC and KPMG: How will the 2012 Budget affect you? 》。 The government budget has always been a professional and complicated public policy incident, the media to solve the problem is how to effectively interpret its impact on the lives of ordinary residents. The BBC's calculator is simple and practical, and users can automatically figure out how much more tax they will pay for their new budget, whether their lives will be better or worse than this year, and so on.

In the domestic also has this aspect the attempt, last year National day, the visitor leaves the massive rubbish in Tiananmen Square, causes the Chinese people's quality the big discussion. From the point of view of large data analysis, all the reports about the rubbish in Tiananmen Square have been sorted out over the years. In this way, all the data can be found, there is no correlation between the number of rubbish and the number of tourists (in fact, Tiananmen Square for security needs, no garbage bins), human quality can not talk about. By digging the data, the journalist's work is based on solid evidence, provides the reader with scientific insight, transforms the abstract and macroscopic social problems into the content that is related to the ordinary people, is easy to understand by ordinary people, and analyzes the laws and trends of the development of things in complex situations, and provides the predictive content for people to make decisions.

In the age of large data, the role of media man should be the creator of meaning, the main work content is to explain the impact of events. The event analysis and interpretation of meaning based on large data technology is more reliable than interviewing experts and judging by individual journalists.

Strategic breakthrough to advance layout

Why is it that some internet companies, not traditional media or publishing organizations, are on the cutting edge of the big data? It is because of the decisive factor of the technical reason, the technology gathers the data, the data meaning is present, only then can have "the correlation" to say, will ignore the causal link. In this respect, the traditional media industry has a congenital disadvantage, not only the limited data resources, master of talent and management is also basically zero. It can be said that the vast majority of media organizations even traditional processes, tools and methods are not mastered.

A simple example: CCTV, China's largest broadcaster, is said to have nearly 400,000 hours of programming resources, with an annual total of 230,248 hours, while YouTube has 72 hours of video uploaded every minute, not to mention the behavior data of 1 billion independent users per month. Data levels vary widely. Therefore, the traditional media by the large data impact and impact, but lack of foundation, it is difficult to appear subversive innovation, can not hatch a new business form.

Traditional media in the large data age to survive, in addition to the news business itself to change, but also in advance layout, accumulate data assets, lay the foundation. such as Zhejiang Daily newspaper group to buy wing-ho side. Winger Hao has five hundred or six hundred games, active users up to more than 20 million, the highest number of online 1.5 million. Around this platform, Zhejiang Newspaper group can build data analysis system for support, in-depth screening to capture user behavior, habits, preferences and needs, mining and accumulate valuable data resources. From its own growth and value-added feasibility, this platform for traditional media value is enormous.

On the other hand, the acquisition of data capability should be enhanced. Through cooperation, purchase, outsourcing and hatching, the media should first master the traditional data processing ability, then have the ability of large data application, and introduce and train data talents, including "data scientists" with many skills, such as statistics, business intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, etc. There are also analysts and managers who know how to design products and operate companies by using large data. Zhejiang Newspaper Group's media dream Factory invested in Knowledge micro, excellent micro-projects, mainly focus on the social network data depth mining.