Worries are often magnified for people in isolation. The large amount of information in news and on social media can easily make us confused and anxious and become victims of information overload during such a crisis.
Professor Zhang Lifen from School of Journalism, Fudan University, former Editor-in-Chief of FTChinese, arrived in the U.S. months ago for his winter vacation. He kept a close eye on the epidemic in China on the internet and has been experiencing the confinement in the U.S. for weeks. In an interview with Cheng Yating, Executive Editor of Management Insights from School of Management, Fudan University. Professor Zhang shared some sharp observations about the roles journalism and social media have been playing during the pandemic.
Which aspects of the reports on the epidemic made by the Chinese media caught your attention?
I was a reporter for nearly 30 years, so I have been very concerned about reports on the emergence of the epidemic in China. China Business Network and Caixin reported the first cases in Wuhan and informed the public about what was happening as early as on December 30, 2019. A major public crisis like this is often a trial for the media’s social responsibility and the training of the journalists.
In the past two months, what has the Western media been focusing on in their reports about the pandemic?
Whether in the U.S., Europe, or China, what the public wants to know are the same – the five Ws plus one H. No matter how disparate the news and media systems might be, these are always the most basic information that the public must get hold of.
Social media tend to make people become narrow-minded and augment misunderstanding and prejudice. Do you think this has happened again during this pandemic?
The word “anxiety” is heard more and more. It’s probably going to be the keyword of 2020 or even this century. During the past decade, the number of research projects on the correlation between media and anxiety has multiplied. Evolution has not prepared us for the sudden popularity of social media. The organs and cognition of the human beings are not capable of processing so much information. Therefore, it is essential to protect ourselves from becoming the victims of information overload.
Social media has an amplification effect. Surrounded by this ocean of information, we are prone to be touched at some vulnerable part of our hearts at any minute, which will then cause us to fall into deeper anxiety and insecurity. So we must strive to resist this dominance of information over our minds.
Do you have specific tips on this for the young generation?
First, with time so limited in modern life, we need to focus on reliable sources of information.
Second, we are entering an interesting era where everyone can contribute to ensure the authenticity of information and the quality of information. So we must read everything on the social media carefully and make a judgment about the source before forwarding it.
Third, don't allow the virtual online life to become the main part of your life. There has been another surge in the usage of social media during the recent confinement, simply because people have nothing better to engage themselves upon. I personally have chosen to observe my pet lizards for 1-2 hours per day in my confinement and found it very intriguing and rewarding. So I believe it is very important for children to develop interest and curiosity in the real world at a fairly young age, which will benefit them later immensely in protecting them from the social networking websites.
Rumors proliferated during the epidemic. Why do people fall for them so easily?
Rumors have always accompanied us throughout the history of the human society. People gather around a scene of dispute on the street out of curiosity or because they don’t want to be left out of something. This is human nature. Behind the rumors, there is the potential insecurity of human beings. We hope to gain more information to dissipate our doubts and anxieties.
New facts discovered by journalists often entail a drastic change in the public attitudes, which acts not unlike a wild twist in a film or a story. How to interpret this from the perspective of communication studies?
Our judgment is reversed because the facts we know are reversed.
At the beginning of the outbreak, there were many assumptions. How to lead our recognition from a hypothesis to a more reliable knowledge involves work by people from different sectors of the society – scientists, government officers, journalists, each with their own duties. The problem faced by the Chinese media is not the platform, the technology, or the investment, but the most fundamental issue for media: whether they can discover and report the facts.
Only one reversal of our recognition makes sense, that is when the event has actually developed. So for the journalists, fact-checking is the essential basic training. How to ascertain whether something you hear or read is a fact? How to describe the facts to the public? Moreover, this fact-checking ability is also a basic training for citizens.
Why did the financial media performed remarkably in reporting this epidemic?
This is because for financial and commercial media, information is an asset. When I was working in the Financial Times, I was extremely afraid of making mistakes about the figures. Why? Because any mistake may cause market fluctuations, which may have a direct impact on enterprises, government policies and people's daily life. This is why journalists from financial media often have better training and display great professionalism.
