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 TeeprFacebook 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.comwebsite 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.comare 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/
