TITLE:
The Impact of Algorithm on Local Journalism: A Comparative Study on Report of Wuxi’s Bridge Collapse in 2019
AUTHORS:
Hai Tang, Lihong Qi, Xiao Zhang
KEYWORDS:
Transparency, Accountability, Local Journalism, Bridge Collapse Event in Wuxi, Algorithmic News
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Journalism and Communication,
Vol.8 No.3,
August
13,
2020
ABSTRACT: The Bridge Collapse event
in Wuxi in October last year attracted the attention of several domestic media
outlets. The news was simultaneously known to readers when the accident took
place. Compared with the rapid coverage of the big media, the local media in
Wuxi chose to report on the news after two days. The two different attitudes of
the media on report of accident news arguably reflected the way of algorithmic
news working in context of network society, where local news is accessible from
more and more different sources, and where transparency and accountability
shall be kept as key tenet of journalism ethics. This paper criticized the
local media in Wuxi by elucidated its limitation in aware of accident news as
algorithmic as reportable from a series of layers such as immediacy,
newsworthy, interactive mode, etc. It also suggests that the challenge of using
algorithms is to develop journalistic professionalism, including critique, the
use of transparency and concern for public opinions.