Have you get Shocked today?! How Content Farms Generate Affective Publics in Cyberspace…
1. Introduction
In cyberspace, Content Farms generally refers to web companies that employ
large numbers of freelance writers to produce unlimited contents mainly in
purpose to generate advertising revenue for reader page views. Content Farms
have been flourishing ever since Demand Media which was founded in California, surged
to top the 100 highest ranking of searched website in the US in 2006-9 with its
millions of dollars of profits.[1] It
published up to 4,000 articles and videos every day, with most content providing
the “How To” solutions that are made up by anonymous with no original source
for reference. Similar contents are compiled from and copied to various online
websites. [2]
Since it became popular, it has been heavily criticized mainly for the
lack of factual evidence and for spamming the search results with low quality
content on Google and Facebook. In 2013 and 2014, Google and Facebook
eventually implemented a new system of algorithms in attempt to “promote
original contents”, which have successfully caused a huge decline in page views
and popularity in Content Farms. [3][4][5] However while the decline
is happening in the Western/English-writing world, similar Content Farms have
been seen “blossomed” in Chinese-writing web pages. At least ten content farm
pages surged to the top 100 highest searched websites in either Taiwan, Hong
Kong, Malaysia or Singapore in 2014 and 2015, and most of them only established
that year.[6] Since then, various
kinds of stories and video clips with similar narrative styles can be seen repeatedly
circulated and shared by different “farms” via social media.
This paper aims to analyze how Content Farms have become a social
phenomenon for online readers’ regular consumption and practices, and how do
they come to dominate the narrative styles in cyberspace. Hypotheses are, Content
Farms rely on the algorithm and EdgeRank on Facebook to circulate. They also
rely on users’ active participation in terms of likes and shares to maximize
their exposure. In order to achieve more attraction, they express in ridiculously
exaggerated form with the overly use of exclamation marks, quotation marks and
ellipses to create intensity of emotion, which would then translate to numbers
of click for advertisement revenues. Platform and textual analysis will be
studied on Teepr.com, which is now
the 20th most searched website in Taiwan, from its form of
narratives and how it maximizes the views by utilizing the social media affordance
on Facebook.
2. Readings and Methods
2.1
The Algorithm God that Brings
Prosperity
The rise of Content Farms in Chinese-reading world came in
accordance with the increasing pervasiveness of Facebook especially in Taiwan.
Taiwan has the highest rate of Facebook penetration in 2014, with as many as 15
millions active users and 65% of penetration rate.[7] This was the
time when Content Farms started to blossom, when the first Chinese Content Farm
GigaCircle was founded in early 2014
and immediately went up to the top 10 Taiwan most visited website within a
month.[8] Statistics collected from Alexa.com shows that most of the Content Farms got their views and
articles circulated via Facebook. For instance in Teepr.com, 38.3% unique users visited Facebook before landing at
the website, whereas on the second rank, only 5.3% visited the website through
Google.[9] Similar result is also shown for bomb01.com, another content farm that is now in top 30 most
searched website in Taiwan and Hong Kong. [10]
Nonetheless, how Facebook manages the posts and News Feed are mostly
hidden behind the fanciful digital world, and discussions about Facebook’s
algorithm are much lesser and rarer than with Google’s Page Rank. This is
probably due to the common beliefs that Facebook is less significant than the
Google search engines, even though this world largest social networking site is
ranked the second highest viewed page around the world for years. [11]
In his article “Dialectic of Google”, Andrea Miconi argues that
internet users seem to trust search engines (aka Google) more than any other
platforms (such as traditional news media in his context), due to its “apparent
neutrality” rather than gatekeeping function.[12] The dialectic of
Google lies in while the algorithm PageRank “tends to favour the most linked
pages, thus building a kind of homogenized agenda of knowledge and
informationl; the use of cookies on the contrary leads to a very specific
customization, likely to provide any user with a sort of individual ‘bubble’”.[13] While users trust the top results from the search
engine as a kind of authoritative suggestion, those with high rankings do not truly
equal to quality, because in the digital world where algorithm rules, “content
does not matter, only links do.” [14]
In fact, the rise and fall of the first generation of Content Farm,
Demand Media is a classic example for the power of PageRank. When it went
public in 2011, the valuation rose to over $2 billion dollars. After Google
introduce the new algorithm called Panda, its stock value dropped 79% in 2013. [15]
In fact, the then world largest Content Farm also use their own algorithm to
collect the most searched keywords from search engine, before repackaging them and
publishing on their website with many profit-making advertisements attached. [16]
Similarly, Facebook implemented EdgeRank as its new algorithm in
2010 to sort and filter what should be on top and what should be seen on users’
News Feeds. Each interaction the user makes with other “Object” that shows on
one’s News Feed — which includes status updates, photos, videos etc. — through Likes,
Shares or Comments, would create an “Edge”. Through calculations Facebook’s EdgeRank
holds the “power of visibility” for certain Edge to be highlighted and some to
be downgraded.[17] Therefore, in
order to be seen on other users’ News Feed, certain platform logic has to be
followed and embedded to suit the architecture of design. Investing in Facebook
Advertisements is one of the most chosen options by companies for News Feed
Optimization. On the other hand, Content Farms tend to seek other ways to
optimize their posts’ exposure without having to pay a single cent, and that is
through lots and lots of interactions and multiple linkages.
2.2
Higher Visibility via Mass Production and Frequent Postings
According to Bucher’s study, if a story was published within the
last three hours, there will be 40-50% of chances for it to get to the “Top
News” wall of its page followers. Therefore by publishing more articles within
certain timeframe, chances for the posts to be shown would be higher. “Mass
production” in this case is one strategy for Content Farm to maximize their
exposure. [18]
A platform study on Teepr
Facebook Page has been done to examine whether the number of posts would
receive higher exposure on followers’ News Feed, and lead to more interactions including
likes, shares and comments. [19] Each post and “Edge” is counted. Even
though Facebook interaction does not fully transfer to webpage clicks, the visibility
of a post still considered as a main source of exposure. As a result, articles
are scheduled manually to be posted every 15 or 20 minutes during peak hours,
and 1 hour each on non-peak hours. (See Appendix 1) On 26 December 2015, 40
posts were updated on Teepr Facebook
page, and it generated 196,718 Likes, 14,361 Shares, and 2,562 Comments in total.
Reading the figures alone does not
produce any meaning; therefore I use a “formal” and somehow reputable news
portal, The Guardian’s Facebook page to draw comparison. [20] On the same day, 30 scheduled posts were made, and it generated
only 34,549 Likes, 10,064 Shares and 3,165 Comments. (Appendix 2) One key difference
to take note is that there are only 1,555,008 total Likes on Teepr Facebook page; whereas The
Guardian has attracted 5,108,365 Likes on Facebook. Given that each organic
post on a page can only reach 16% of their fans in average,[21] the
numbers of interaction on Teepr Facebook
page proves the hypothesis to be right - more postings lead to higher visibility,
and chances that it reaches and shares among friends or friends of friends are also
higher.
Apart from utilizing Facebook to increase visibility, maximizing
their traffic by multiplying the same content to different platforms is another.
By doing a simple search for one of the sample headlines on Google, at least 5
search results showed the exact same content and headline with Teepr.com at the top of Google Search
Result page. (Appendix 3) This shows that
Google’s PageRank is still relevant in placing pages with higher traffic and
more links on higher ranks.
Furthermore, Facebook’s EdgeRank
also relies on the interrelationships among users to highlight or downgrade the
posts.[22] Therefore despite increasing
visibility from “mass production” to flood the Top News, Content Farms also need
to increase users’ attractions and interactions with their content. Bear in
mind that none of the content is originally produced, which is where affective economy
comes into play to catch the audiences’ attentions and manipulate their emotion
with certain kind of narratives, which will then translate into clicks and advertisement
revenues.
3. Affective Economics and
Emotional Capital
Social media platforms allow each individuals to share and post to
express their own “feelings” whenever they please, and this affordance has in
fact opened up a new category of data mining “for the first time in human
history”, to use Mark Andrejevic’s words, as “a collective measurement of
sentiment” that can be taken and analyzed through messages on social networks
that are freely flowing and accessible to everyone.[23] In the era where
information and emotions are constantly overloaded online, these responses can
be utilized to navigate users’ preferences, and also serve as marketing data in
association with “mass customized economy”.[24]
Henry Jenkin’s notion of “affective economics” and “emotional
capital, outlined in Convergence Culture, refers to this shift of media
engagement where affects and emotions are main driving forces for marketers and
advertisers to manage and manipulate.[25] In
order to master audiences’ emotional capital, marketers and researchers tend to
maximize emotional investment and engagement, to track audience’s reactions
towards certain data, to shape the ambience and develop ways to induce the
desired outcomes from the audiences.[26]
In Content Farms, writers hold power and control over the emotional
capital in their narratives – even though they do not own the copyrights of the
source. They are considered as the “affective or immaterial labours” who tend
to (re)define the cultural tastes, fashions, standards, norms and even public opinion,
with “production and manipulation of affects”. Audiences’ emotional responses make
the capital, and every read and click would then translate into advertising revenues
or other exchange values.[27]
3.1 Content Analysis on Teepr Posts
3.1.1 Headlines
In order to examine the way
Content Farm manipulate readers’ emotions, 10 posts are selected randomly
from the main page of Teepr.com
website to analyze the content and the narratives. All headlines are written in
sentence forms, but often ended with different punctuation marks, in which
according to Dictionary.com, refers to “the use of symbols … to indicate
aspects of the intonation and meaning not otherwise conveyed in the written language”.[28] (Appendix 4) Out
of ten headlines, three of them end with full stops, three end with exclamation
marks, and another four end with ellipses. Based on formal grammar, full stops
are used at the end of a sentence “that is not question or exclamation”. Exclamation
marks are often used to indicate intensity of emotion; whereas ellipses
indicate the “omission of parts of a word or sentence”, which would then
generate audiences’ curiosity to know what have been omitted.[29]
It is obvious that the use of headlines of Teepr.com is vastly different from the conventional styles that are
always framed neatly in phrase and without any punctuation marks. The headlines
in Teepr.com are mostly descriptive.
They either give a summary and suggest unrevealed ending (as shown in Story
6,8); or reveal the most dramatic part and suggest other audience’s reactions
(in story 3,4); or a self-revealing quote by using first person intonation (in
Story 2); or even make a prophetic response to induce audiences to click and
confirm their own judgements (in Story 10). All in all, by increasing intensity
and emotional curiosity, these somewhat “creative” headlines have successfully attracted
the audiences’ eyeballs to click for more.
3.1.2 Tags and Tagline
Looking into Teepr.com, the
website’s interface is designed as alike as a news website. On top of the “brand
name” TEEPR, a tagline below writes “interesting news”. There are columns for
posts to put into different categories, such as “TEEPR Original Videos” (to
differentiate with other copied content), “News”, “Lifestyle”, “Entertainment”,
“Hilarious”, “Touching”, “Animals”, “Surprise”, “Art”, “Performance”, “Travel”
and also “Female Zone”. There is even a “TEEPR Current Affairs” column located
vertically on the right side of the homepage, in which the first five stories
from the sample are actually picked from this category.
Even though the categories look diverse, most contents are highly
overlapped and interconnected. The multiple tags under each article are less of
indicating which category the topic belongs to; but more of linking it to
multiple categories to increase its visibility and chances of clicks. For
example, Story 4 is tagged with “Entertainment, News, Game, Surprise, and Video”,
so it means whenever users click one of these categories, the same “news” will
be there. It is a provision of illusion of choices.
3.1.3 Content
Apart from the headline narratives that are coded in similar way,
the content of each post is also similar in writing styles and forms. Most
articles begin with an image with caption typed on it, so that users can spot
the title straight from the image itself. Then there are a few lines to start
the story, an image follows, a few more lines, another image — irrelevant cartoon
or images of pets are often used to increase the “fun” or creativity — a line
of conclusion, and that’s it. Images are often more emphasized than words, and
images that imply sex or star gossips often receive higher views and shares.
Quality control is absent, because none of them are original in the
first place. They are either a summary of story from other Western tabloid
websites such as Daily Mail or The Lab Bible which is also a Content Farm
itself; or merely a piece of music, advertisement or video clip copied from
YouTube. In contrast, since quantity matters the most, “Content Farmers” are
good at re-packaging any existing online data with specific tones of expression
that is mentioned above to attract revenues. Once clicking into a post, one
will see at least 12 advertisements swapping images in .gif format at the top,
in between paragraphs, and below the posts. Before scrolling until the end, a
small box will pop up interrupting the flow of reading, and request viewers to “Like”
the page or “Share” to others. Comments are relatively not encouraged as it
needs more individual efforts to write. Messages and words are not valued, only
clicks and all act for viral distribution count.
According to Pew Research Centre, entertainment news are the most
common news type that 73% Facebook users consume.[30] It is then not
a surprise when all different genres of content are re-written and re-packaged
into entertainment news. By omitting the date or time of an incident, the news
look timeless and can therefore be read as only a joke, a story out of nowhere,
a titbits of the day, at anytime, from anywhere.
4. Cultural Effects?
4.1
The Demise of Master Narratives and Symbolic Efficiency
In this information and image-based capitalist culture, there is
demise in master narratives and prop up of symbolic efficiency, “which is a
preoccupation for affect to comes to the fore”.[31] This is
especially the case for Content Farms where the highly repetitive headlines
with constant use of “magic words” could guarantee clicks regardless what the
real content is. Jodi Dean, while referring to “Word-Cloud”, goes further to
see the social phenomenon that emphasizes only words but not stories and
narratives, as a demise of symbolic efficiency.[32] Words without context
would contribute to “reading without reading – signification without comprehension”,
which is exactly how audiences respond to the Content Farms’ click baits.[33][34]
Because affect is a force, even if readers thought they are not enjoying, they
enjoy reading nothing when their curiosity and emotional needs are satisfied.
4.2
The Challenge of Homogenized Narratives on Mainstream Media and Landscape
of Journalism
Hyper-exaggerated punctuations, fragmented stories, mismatched
images, misleading headlines, and biased information are nothing new in cyberspace.
However when the specific Content Farm-style of narratives and headlines become
the new most-liked “fashion” for online users to consume, writers tend to
homogenize themselves with similar styles in order to achieve similar rankings
and profits. The algorithm system in Google and Facebook has therefore become a
disciplinary threshold for affective economics to work.
How will this homogenized narrative culture impact on the mainstream
media platforms, and eventually change the landscape of journalism? When
Content Farms first appeared, discussions arisen on whether the image-based
short narratives with often exaggerated headlines will become a new form of
journalism given its mass acceptance.[35] It turns out that it might
be true, as the mainstream media are now following the trend especially when
they promote articles on social media platforms. Only two year ago, no Facebook
updates on the online platform of mainstream media would end with ellipses.
Those are simply incomplete sentences which is unacceptable in formal news writings.
But today, half of the news posts from the Facebook page of China Press Daily –
a 60-year-old second bestselling Chinese newspaper in Malaysia – use ellipses
at the end of the sentence, in hope to generate the same curiosity from the
public as how they consume Content Farm posts.[36] Most updates are
also entertainment-based.
A study on Apple Daily – a popular tabloid newspaper in Taiwan –
also suggests that the journalism practises and role of news media in Taiwan
have been shifted from “traditionally informative and objective providers of
hard news” to “emotional and prejudiced disseminator of soft news.”[37]
Questions then arise, that if the public indeed favour Content Farm-like news
writings and it brings huge revenue to the mainstream media firm to sustain,
how would media firms adapt themselves to this new form of reading practices by
balancing the quantity and quality (which include professional facts-writing,
more time to investigate and seek confirmation and so on)? If we still acknowledge
the value of traditional journalism, how can we make efforts to support in
action so that it won’t die out due to financial constraint? More studies and further
investigations are needed if these were to be answered.
5. Conclusion
When the Western Content Farms died from the new PageRank algorithm
implementation from Google, the same model started to prosper across
Chinese-reading communities, including Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore, with
Taiwan as the pioneer of all. This second generation of Content Farm relies
more on Facebook as their main social networking platform to gain visibility
out from the interactions (likes, shares, comments, post) among users. A
platform and content study on Teepr.com
are done to see how mass production and frequent updates on Facebook are taken
as part of the strategies to maximize exposure on the Top News Feed of their
followers.
In order to achieve more attraction, an overly use of punctuation
marks in headline narratives has become a common affective attempt to arouse the
“non-conscious experience of intensity” in viewers. The goal of affective
economics is to structure these intensity, and make them personalized.[38]
Marketing emotional capital is “to help a customer to realize his or her desire”
to click and to satisfy the need to know. To increase higher chances of clicks,
multiple linkage by tags on the webpage, and multiple sharing on other
platforms are also part of the strategies to receive more views. Since soft
news are mostly viewed than other news genre, Content Farmers tend to
re-package all news into entertainment news for more pleasure consumption.
The over-simplified narratives that emphasize nothing more than
emotional intensity foresee the demise of master narratives and symbolic
efficiency. While the audience feel they have the subjective autonomy to choose
what to read or not, their desires rely only upon the marketers/producers’ homogenized
manipulation of narratives, and Facbeook’s secretive EdgeRank algorithm. Whether or not the Content Farms will decline
in market and profits, the mainstream media firms are catching up with similar
expression in hope to receive similar financial rewards. How this social
phenomenon would affect the whole landscape of journalism remain more field
works to be done.
Appendix 1 Appendix 2
Post updates on Teepr Facebook Page, and the numbers of
interactions they receive as at 26 December 2015, 23:00
|
Post updates on The Guardian Facebook Page, and the numbers of
interactions they receive as at 26 December 2015, 23:00
|
|||||||
Total Likes on FB Page: 1,555,008
|
Total Likes on FB Page: 5,108,365
|
|||||||
Time
|
Like
|
Share
|
Comment
|
Time
|
Likes
|
Share
|
Comment
|
|
23:40
|
2302
|
123
|
72
|
23:30
|
493
|
85
|
35
|
|
23:20
|
1267
|
20
|
3
|
23:00
|
1437
|
694
|
117
|
|
23:00
|
6838
|
292
|
52
|
22:40
|
1465
|
314
|
56
|
|
22:45
|
717
|
29
|
7
|
22:20
|
4882
|
2858
|
240
|
|
22:15
|
1673
|
30
|
11
|
22:00
|
996
|
414
|
212
|
|
22:00
|
8478
|
362
|
59
|
21:30
|
242
|
107
|
28
|
|
21:45
|
3220
|
141
|
27
|
21:00
|
1552
|
294
|
189
|
|
21:30
|
3586
|
865
|
88
|
20:30
|
1164
|
139
|
68
|
|
21:15
|
1150
|
66
|
66
|
20:00
|
140
|
35
|
43
|
|
21:00
|
2242
|
179
|
11
|
19:30
|
212
|
34
|
20
|
|
20:40
|
5193
|
116
|
67
|
19:00
|
245
|
78
|
42
|
|
20:20
|
3666
|
139
|
48
|
18:30
|
530
|
70
|
154
|
|
20:00
|
4243
|
186
|
42
|
18:00
|
370
|
119
|
80
|
|
19:40
|
12156
|
1499
|
151
|
17:30
|
2088
|
377
|
462
|
|
19:20
|
9064
|
989
|
58
|
17:00
|
349
|
212
|
55
|
|
18:59
|
2491
|
74
|
18
|
16:30
|
686
|
230
|
67
|
|
18:30
|
7872
|
296
|
56
|
16:00
|
1444
|
531
|
107
|
|
18:01
|
1456
|
43
|
6
|
15:30
|
200
|
31
|
33
|
|
17:30
|
1124
|
18
|
3
|
10:00
|
151
|
37
|
17
|
|
17:00
|
2323
|
86
|
47
|
8:00
|
998
|
396
|
376
|
|
16:30
|
9764
|
834
|
210
|
4:30
|
239
|
35
|
25
|
|
16:00
|
7621
|
362
|
46
|
4:00
|
2905
|
408
|
92
|
|
15:00
|
6197
|
298
|
22
|
3:30
|
1532
|
175
|
77
|
|
14:30
|
14879
|
716
|
95
|
3:00
|
888
|
84
|
69
|
|
14:00
|
973
|
13
|
7
|
2:30
|
6257
|
1751
|
281
|
|
13:00
|
2632
|
100
|
5
|
2:00
|
1426
|
317
|
129
|
|
12:30
|
4227
|
308
|
136
|
1:45
|
281
|
49
|
8
|
|
12:00
|
4822
|
882
|
139
|
1:00
|
630
|
123
|
40
|
|
11:30
|
9050
|
1087
|
243
|
0:30
|
624
|
53
|
25
|
|
11:00
|
2980
|
161
|
48
|
0:00
|
123
|
14
|
18
|
|
10:00
|
10308
|
341
|
47
|
|||||
9:30
|
13441
|
1351
|
369
|
30 (posts)
|
34,549
|
10,064
|
3,165
|
|
9:00
|
7283
|
804
|
52
|
|||||
8:01
|
2278
|
114
|
32
|
|||||
7:00
|
2267
|
44
|
9
|
|||||
6:00
|
4365
|
242
|
40
|
|||||
3:00
|
3599
|
163
|
70
|
|||||
2:00
|
2991
|
144
|
14
|
|||||
1:00
|
1813
|
64
|
16
|
|||||
0:00
|
4167
|
780
|
70
|
|||||
40 (posts)
|
196718
|
14361
|
2562
|
|||||
Appendix 3: Same content multiplied on different platforms.
Appendix
4:
Random posts were picked from Teepr.com main page on 27 December 2015,
12:45am.
Story No.
|
Chinese Headline
|
Literal English Translation
|
Tagging
|
Headline Narrative Style
|
1
|
這位老公每天放屁放不停，然後超痛恨屁味的老婆就被警察逮捕了。
|
This husband farts non-stop everyday, and then the wife who hates farting smell very much was arrested by the police.
|
Descriptive and revealing
the story’s summary.
|
|
Direct Translation for whole story:
There was this girl who couldn't stand her
husband farting non-stop on their bed, to the extent
that domestic violence happened. That's right, it’s unbelievable, but this is true story. The name of this
poor guy is Donal Ftzroy Meikle, who
has claimed that he was hit by his wife's elbow on 11 December.
(GIF Image: A male cartoon character farting – with photo credit cited) But even if he got punched, his fart did not stop, and kept making the sound "pupupupupu" until his wife could not endure anymore and kicked him down from bed. (GIF Image: Two real puppies fighting) The husband was determined, and he crawled back to bed and continued farting, until he got attacked by his wife again. His wife chase him out with pepper spray, but the husband counter-attacked and pushed his wife on the floor (this is not 18sx story), and hurt his wife's lips due to her resistance. Now the wife was charged for causing domestic violence. (Image: the wife's real photo, with caption: Image above is the wife who hates farting smell) Source: the Lad Bible Farting is human's natural reaction, even though it is annoying if one keeps farting, it does not need to hit XD |
||||
2
|
這名21歲的英國女孩謊稱兩度被強姦，背後的超幼稚原因讓老經驗法官都說”我一輩子從沒看過這麼自私邪惡的行為“。
|
This 21 year-old British
girl lied that she got raped twice, the reason behind was so childish that
even the veteran judge said "I have never seen this selfish and evil attitude in my life."
|
Terrible, news, society
|
Descriptive and
self-revealing from quoting the judge’s view.
|
3
|
這名乘客在火車上找到了一張破碎的聖誕卡，拼湊完發現“不單純故事”後讓網友心都碎了！
|
This passenger found a piece of broken Christmas card on the train, the
"story that is not simple" that he realized after matching back the
pieces have broken the hearts of the netizens!
|
News, lifestyle
|
Descriptive and stressing
the heart-broken moment!
|
4
|
迪斯尼《星際大戰》電玩裡台詞意外洩漏“主角身世之謎”，雖然刪除但已經太晚了...
|
The script in Disney's Star War game has accidentally revealed "the
mystery of the protagonist's life", it's too late even though it's
deleted…
|
Entertainment, news,
game, surprise, video
|
Descriptive and stressing
the pitiful emotion…
|
5
|
這名網友將“身心障礙弟弟遭解僱後的工資單”PO上網，超過分的薪水細節讓網友們都快氣瘋了…
|
This netizen posts the salary list of his handicapped brother online, the
unacceptable details of the salary made netizens mad…
|
News, surprise, society,
terrible
|
Descriptive and stressing
other readers' emotion…
|
6
|
柯文哲即將上任滿一年於是推出了這部《柯文哲，反省》短片，最後一段話已經逼哭了許多網友…
|
Ko Wen-je (The incumbent
of Taipei, Taiwan) is reaching his one year tenure; therefore he published
this short film "Ko Wen-je, Self-reflection", the last paragraph
made many netizens cried…
|
News, surprise, touching,
society, video
|
Descriptive and suggesting secretive end…
|
7
|
18張只要你看完後就會發誓不生孩子的”恐怖折磨家長照片“。
|
18 Horrible Photos about
parent tortures that you would swear not
to have babies after looking at them
|
Hilarious, Paternity
|
Informative and
instructive (even educative)
|
8
|
她們發現這台“塞滿玉米棒的夾娃娃機”決定碰碰運氣，沒想到當夾子緩緩下降之後…
|
They decided to try their
luck after finding this "doll catching machine that is stuffed with
corn", who knows when the craw drops down slowly…
|
Video, Hilarious,
Surprise
|
Descriptive and revealing in suspense…
|
9
|
這名插畫家“在雪人群中藏了一隻熊貓”，超過10萬網友都開心地找瘋了！
|
This illustrator
"hid a panda in a crowd of snowman", more than 100 thousand netizens looked for it
crazily and happily!
|
Test, Art, Animal, Cute
|
Descriptive and
expressive!
|
10
|
這個男生就這樣跟著他的兄弟一起走，當走到最後一步時你的眼淚就會炸出來了！
|
This guy walked with his brother together, but when they reached the last step your tears will burst!
|
Video, Touching
|
Descriptive and
prophetic!
|
Notes
and Cited Works:
[1] Wallenstein, Andrew, Todd Spangler. “Epic
Fail: The Rise and Fall of Demand Media”.
Variety. 3 December 2013. http://variety.com/2013/biz/news/epic-fail-the-rise-and-fall-of-demand-media-1200914646/
[2] Roth, Daniel. “The Answer Factory:
Demand Media and
The Fast, Disposable, and
Profitable As Hell Media Model”. Wired. 19
October 2009. http://www.wired.com/2009/10/ff_demandmedia/
[3] Wallenstein, Andrew, Todd Spangler. “Epic
Fail: The Rise and Fall of Demand Media”.
Variety. 3 December 2013. http://variety.com/2013/biz/news/epic-fail-the-rise-and-fall-of-demand-media-1200914646/
[4] Jessica Guynn,
Jessica. “Google
Makes Major Change in Search Ranking Algorithms”. Los Angeles Times. 26 February 2011. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/26/business/la-fi-google-search-20110226
[5] Kacholia, Varun. “News
Feed FYI: Helping You Find More News to Talk About”. Facebook. 2 December 2013. http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2013/12/news-feed-fyi-helping-you-find-more-news-to-talk-about/
[6] Some of the content farm pages that are
ranked within top 100 most visited websites in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and
Singapore include: teepr.com, bomb01.com, mobile01.com, shareonion.com,
buzzhand.com, ptt01.cc, gigacircle.com.
[7] “Taiwan
Likes Facebook, Has Highest Penetration”. Taipei
Times. 28 February 2014. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2014/02/28/2003584495
[8] Zou, Jia-Yan. “Is
it Content Farm that Steals Others’ Articles, or Content Platforms of Creative
Business Model? Exclusive Interview with Founder of GigaCircle Jeremy”. BuzzOrange. 25 November 2014. http://buzzorange.com/techorange/2014/11/25/interview-with-gigacircle-jeremy/
[in Chinese]
[9] Data available at http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/teepr.com
[10] Data available at http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/bomb01.com
[11] Data available at http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/facebook.com
[12] Miconi, Andrea. 2014. “Dialetic of
Google”. in Society of the Query Reader:
Re‑ections on Web Search, René König and Miriam Rasch
(eds), Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, p. 32.
[13] Miconi, Andrea, p. 37.
[14] Miconi, Andrea, p. 39.
[15] Launder, William. “Demand Media's eHow
Learns Hard Lessons: Strategy Began to Fall Apart as
Google Changed Search Algorithms”. Wall
Street Journal. 20 October 2013. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304384104579144130305277324
[16] Benkoil, Dorian. “Don’t Blame the Content Farms”. MediaShift. 26 July 2010. http://mediashift.org/2010/07/dont-blame-the-content-farms207
[17] in Bucher, Taina. “Want to be on the top? Algorithmic Power and the Threat of
Invisibility on Facebook”. New Media &
Society, November 2012, vol. 14 (7), p. 1164-1180. http://nms.sagepub.com/content/14/7/1164.full
[18] in Bucher, Taina. 2012.
[19] “TEEPR趣味新聞”. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/teepr/
[20] “The Guardian”. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/theguardian/
[21] “Facebook for Business”. Facebook. 24
April 2012. https://www.facebook.com/marketing/posts/10150839503836337
[22] in Bucher, Taina. 2012.
[23] Andrejevic, Mark. 2013. Infoglut:
How Too Much Information is Changing the Way We Think and Know. New York:
Routledge, p.57.
[24] Andrejevic, Mark,
p.58.
[25] Andrejevic, Mark,
p.62.
[26] Andrejevic, Mark,
p.59.
[27] Andrejevic, Mark,
p.64.
[28] “Punctuation”.
Dictionary.com. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/punctuation
[29] See “Full Stop”, “Exclamation Point”, “Ellipses” at Dictionary.com
(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/full-stop; http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/exclamation--mark; http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ellipses)
[30] Anderson, Monica, Andrea
Caumont. “How Social Media is Reshaping News”. Pew Research Center. 24 September 2014. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/24/how-social-media-is-reshaping-news/
[31] Andrejevic, Mark,
p.66.
[32] Dean, Jodi. “Tag Clouds And The
Decline Of Symbolic Efficiency”. I Cite.
22 January 2009. http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2009/01/tag-clouds.html
[33] Andrejevic, Mark, p.67.
[34] One online user developed a slot machine to auto-generate
the headlines that contains the “magic words” that often appear in Content Farm
articles. http://slot.miario.com/machines/90065
[35]
“Business: Emperors and Beggars; the Rise
of Content Farms. The Economics. 1
May 2010, Vol. 395, p.69. http://proxy1.library.ln.edu.hk:2197/docview/223970356?accountid=12107
[36] China Press 中国报. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/ChinaPressCP/
[37] Liu, Chang-de. Facebook Journalism:
The Influences of Social Media on Journalistic Work in Taiwan, p.107-118. http://www.gscm.nida.ac.th/aseanconference2015/images/download/Proceeding2015/9.pdf
[38] Andrejevic, Mark, p.66.
Published under "Criticism" in the 51st Issue @ MCS Magazine:
http://www.ln.edu.hk/mcsln/51st_issue/criticism_04.shtml
http://www.ln.edu.hk/mcsln/51st_issue/criticism_04.shtml
Recommended Citation：
Tung, W.-q. (2016). Have you get shocked today?! How content farms generate affective publics in cyberspace… Cultural Studies@Lingnan, 51. Retrieved from http://commons.ln.edu.hk/mcsln/vol51/iss1/7/
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