如果要想完整地了解中国的7•23甬温铁路动车追尾事件,恐怕最全面的的见证者不是平面媒体,而是在中国方兴未艾的微博。我相信,正是微博特殊的信息发散功能,使一切变得更透明化,也使中国政府的社会管理方式极其尴尬地显现出它的不透明性。
脱胎于Twitter的微博早被中国网友创造性地将其从社交工具转变成媒体平台。号称“世界上最勤奋”的中国网友利用其特点,充分发挥了同类聚合的功能,无论是功能的多样性还是对信息的容纳量,早已经超过了它的模仿对象Twitter。7•23事件的整个过程,正在被微博通过各种信息碎片慢慢连缀成一幅巨大的拼图。
微博在还原真实的死亡人数方面起了很大的作用。首先,微博让受难者的亲属们尽快了解到他们亲人的消息。遇难者项余岸、施李虹的弟弟项余遇,就是通过微博寻人,得知准确消息并找到了幸存的侄女项炜伊。其次,一些死者家属在微博上发表的信息与网友提供的一些细节,让世界知道死亡39人并非准确的数字。比如一位失去了孩子的母亲郭瑶在腾讯微博上质问铁道部:为什么死亡名单上没有她孩子的名字?到底还有多少人的名字没有登上去?
在揭露铁道部门迅速掩埋车头这件事上,微博同样发挥了很大的作用。 7•23甬温铁路动车追尾事件发生后,车体残骸在不到四天内被切割、拆解、运出现场,其中D301次动车的损毁车头还经历了被埋入坑中再挖出来的“粗暴对待”。事故现场清理之迅速,对车厢、车头等处理之草率,遭到公众诘问。不少被网友拍到的现场照片及强大的诘问声浪首先来自微博,最后迫使有关部门又重新挖出。
微博与传媒形成了极紧密的互动关系。虽然我知道近两年以来,中国许多突发事件最早都是通过微博发布,许多记者也都在微博上日夜蹲守“淘金”,寻找各种有价值的新闻线索并跟踪采访,然后并以最快的速度制作成新闻。但这次7•23事件中,微博与传统媒体互动之迅速,还是让人感到微博的威力。一些微博发烧友在动车上发的信息成了动车之恸最早的信息源,腾讯的微采访,则以及时快捷的形式发布了在传统媒体上不便刊登、或者不能刊登的原汁原味的采访,里面有受害者家属的真实遭遇,现场记者对现场事故的疑点,还有专业人士如律师对受难者家属提供的专业意见。这些互动过程,不仅能帮助受难者寻求到社会帮助,还有利于公民权利意识的觉醒。
微博还让世界看到了这一事件中许多非常生动但传统媒体包括门户网站注定会遗失的细节,比如在总理温家宝到场的那场记者招待会上发生的一件“最让国人蒙羞的讽刺”事件:“今天,忙碌的温总理终于昼夜兼程赶到了7.23动车事故现场,……日本媒体将摄像机架在最前面,后面中国媒体要他 把机子架低点,日本记者不干,理直气壮地说:‘你们国内拍了有用吗?又播不了!’此话犹如晴天霹雳!中国媒体顿时哑然!” 一向受人诟病的央视,其新闻频道《24小时》栏目现任制片人王青雷在新闻播报前表达了一番对国家现状的悲愤,以及不要把车头这么快埋掉的话而被停职,这条消息也是在微博上由媒体人最先发布出来。这些,都让世人看到中国媒体管制的丑恶一面。
在这次动车追尾事故中痛失5位亲人、一直作为受难者家属代表出现的杨峰与有关官员会面后,态度发生180度大转变。他受到将失去第6位亲人的威胁被迫沉默的消息,也是在微博上发表出来,被江苏网友池墨写成短文“是谁在威胁杨峰?”发表于BBC中文网7月28日的“大家谈中国”栏目里,让读者通过杨峰的遭遇感知了中国政府行为黑社会化的一面。
但作为一种新媒体,微博有其长处与短处。微博的“长板”是:无论是从消息的传播速度还是其组织动员方面,其作用和影响都是革新性的。由于参与门槛低,没有“看守”,任何人都可以将身边的突发事件通过微博传播。因此,微博甚至成为外媒眼中“一个观察中国正在发生什么的实时检测系统”。而且微博因其传播的放大效应,可促使事件迅速发酵,这是传统媒体及前微博时代的网络媒体所欠缺的。
微博的“短板”是:作为新闻的首发之地,其信息来源的可靠性有待检验。加之受限于字数,无法深入挖掘、细致铺陈,因而始终只能作为前两类媒体的补充与线索提供者。好在中国传媒界人士有不少聚集在微博上,他们使用微博的心得及经验交流,都能够促使中国社会的信息透明化。
通过对7.23事件中微博的信息发散功能近距离观察,我感到除了网络管制之外,还有一个问题是中国未来信息透明化的一个障碍,那就是中国社会成员对网络资源占有不均所造成的“知性裂沟”,这使微博介入现实的作用不能充分发挥。比如网民在地域上多集中在东部发达地区;享有更多发言权的群体上多集中在占有更多政治、文化、经济资源的群体等等。这次事故当中,能够使用微博的遇难者家属无论在获得信息及社会帮助方面都明显具有优势。
The Power of Weibo: Bringing Transparency to Concealed Truth
Written on July 29, 2011
(Translated by krizcpec)
Those who want to have full understanding of the Wenzhou train collision that happened on July 23, 2011 may find the most comprehensive source of information to be microblogging (Weibo), instead of print media. I believe it is the unique function of information dissemination that made everything more transparent, and thereby revealing, to the extreme embarrassment of the Chinese government, the opacity of the country’s social management.
Evolved from Twitter, Weibo has long been turned from a social tool into a media platform. Reputed to be the most diligent of their kind, Chinese netizens make use of Weibo’s special features, bringing fully into play its function of aggregation of like-minded people, giving Weibo its transcendence over Twitter, both in terms of functional diversity and information capacity. The whole story of that train collision was gradually pieced together with bits and pieces of information circulated across Weibo.
Weibo played an important role in restoring the true death tolls. First, it enabled relatives of the victims to learn quickly about their loved ones. Xiang Yuyu, whose elder brother and sister-in-law were among the dead, managed to locate his niece, Xiang Weiyi, alive by accurate information he gathered via Weibo. Second, from the details shared on Weibo, the world learned that the official death toll at thirty-nine was not accurate. Guo Yao, a mother whose child was killed in the crash, questioned the Ministry of Railways why did her child’s name not appear in the list of victims, and exactly, how many others were not included in that list?
Weibo played an equally important role in revealing the Ministry of Railways’ swift burial of the locomotive. After the collision, the wreckage was cut, dismantled, and moved from the scene in less than four days; the damaged locomotive of D301 was even subjected to rough treatment of being buried first and dug up later. The speedy clearing of the scene of the accident; the sloppy handling of the cars and the locomotive; all these invited questions and criticism from the public. Photos taken at the scene, and the powerful waves of questions emerged first at Weibo, forced the related department to dig up the buried locomotive.
Weibo has been in close interaction with the mass media. I am aware that in the last two years, information on many of China’s emergencies was published first in Weibo. Many journalists would stay nights and days on Weibo to find all sorts of useful leads, follow them, conduct interviews, and then publish the stories as fast as they could. But in this incident, the rapid interaction between Weibo and traditional media still make one feel the power of this form of social media. Information distributed by heavy users of Weibo became the earliest information source for the special feature on this tragedy; with micro-interviews, stories that would be difficult or impossible to publish in traditional media were presented in their entirety to the world in a swift and timely manner: from what relatives of the victims had gone through, to skepticism from journalists on scene and advice from professionals such as lawyers. These interactive processes didn’t just help victims in seeking social assistance, they were also conducive to raising civil rights awareness.
Besides, Weibo has shown the world train-crash-related details that were lively but would definitely not make their way to appear in traditional media. For instance, when premier Wen Jiabao arrived at a press conference, an incident that “made the Chinese people feel most ashamed” occurred: Japanese media practitioners placed their cameras in the front and foremost position, when urged by their Chinese counterpart to lower their cameras, they refused, “What use would that be of? [Your footage] won’t be aired anyway.” A remark that left the Chinese media practitioners lost for words. It was also first published on Weibo the story that Wang Qinglei, current producer of China Central Television news channel “24 hours”, has been suspended over her critical and frustrated remarks about the current situation of the country and the comment that the locomotive was buried too quickly. All this help the world see the ugly side of media control in China.
Yang Feng, a man whose five relatives were killed in the crash, has been acting as the representative of the families of the victims until he completely changed his attitude after a meeting with officials. It was revealed on Weibo that Yang had been forced to keep quiet by the threat that he would lose his sixth relative. Subsequently, an essay entitled “Who is threatening Yang Feng? (是谁在威胁杨峰?)” was published in the BBC Chinese column of Let’s talk about China (大家谈中国) on July 28, bringing the readers to the understanding of the illicit nature of the Chinese government.
As a form of new media, Weibo has its strengths and weaknesses. The strengths of Weibo are: in terms of the speed in dissemination of information and the ability to organize and mobilize people, Weibo has a revolutionary role and impact; because of its low threshold for people to join in and the absence of watchers, anyone can publicize breaking stories that happen around them. These are why foreign media would see Weibo as “a real-time polling system to find out what’s going on in China”. Besides, the amplification effect of Weibo, which traditional media and pre-microblogging online media are lacking, can help generate attention to the incident rapidly.
However, Weibo has the following weaknesses: being the first place where news stories are published, the reliability of their sources of information will need to be examined; the character limit of Weibo makes it impossible to go into details, thus it can only be a source of additional information and leads for traditional and pre-microblogging Internet media. Fortunately, many Chinese media professionals are on Weibo, their tips in using Weibo and experience sharing are able to promote information transparency in Chinese society.
Through up close observation of the information dissemination function of Weibo, I feel that apart from the control of the Internet, there is another problem that would become a barrier for China’s information transparency in future—the “intellectual fissure” resulted from the unequal share of network resource among members of Chinese society. This fissure would hinder the full play of Weibo’s social intervention capacity. For example netizens are mostly concentrated in the eastern part of China; groups that have bigger say are mostly those possess, among other things, more political, cultural, and economic resources. In this incident, those families of the victims who could use Weibo clearly enjoyed an advantage in terms of obtaining information and seeking social assistance.
He Qinglian is a Chinese author and economist, most prominently known for her critical view of Chinese society and media controls in China. Her key publications are: The Pitfalls of Modernization and The Fog of Censorship: Media Control in China
(via Wikipedia)
http://hqlenglish.blogspot.com/2011/08/power-of-weibo-bringing-transparency-to.html
呵呵,不是说中国信息不自由么。 从技术上说政府要过滤微博上的内容那是小菜一碟了,不过我看微博上的东西基本上没过滤啥么。。。
你的话不合逻辑,以此证明中国言论自由会让人耻笑的。再有,就是无论多么严密的过滤都会有漏网的。况且,靠过滤来封锁信息毕竟是常人所不耻的。
好像漏网的也太多了吧?
是太忙了,一个人管上千人,删不过来
过滤是用计算机算法逻辑来运作的。 你还是先学个计算机本科再来评论吧。
您认为以现在的技术能完全过滤掉某些敏感词吗?就算本文可以完全过滤,能那图片呢、音频呢?您不会真的认为现在的人工智能真的这么智能吧~
有个东西叫做扫描仪,可以把图片也扫描成文字录入,但是呢?就算是程序来操作,但是任何东西都是付出代价的,当一条信息,或者多个关键字频繁出现的时候,比方说,在一秒内有一万条信息出现,那你要反复检测一万次,中国网民如此之多,GFW人员有那么快么?各大网站还要收到禁令后才开始过滤,岂不为时过晚?平时你都能看到服务器繁忙一词,在那信息暴增的时刻,又有多少服务器在满负荷运转?再转过头来说了,各大门户网站,哪个愿意失去如此诱人的新闻?
请问AAA,日本占领中国期间,杀光占领区的中国人也属于【小菜一碟】吧,那么,日本投降后,还有这么多中国人没死,按照AAA的逻辑,这是不是应该可以证明日军的伟大光荣正确?
正所谓“魔高一尺,道高一丈”,维稳在“三个代表的指引下”与时俱进”,维权也肯定会在新媒体的帮助下一日千里。纸里包不住火,雪里埋不住死尸,同样道理,谎言最终是掩盖不住真相的。
3A,你来这里发言很自由吗?你怎么不敢以真名示人?你要不要翻墙?政府这么牛逼,你还怕什么?防民之口,让大家“道路以目”,这是谁的政府?这是什么性质的政府?你回答。
中共黄俄伪政权本身就是一个近亲繁殖的腐败窝。丧尽天良的中共黄俄铁道部以前从来都是这样活埋伤者并就地掩埋证据的,只是现在普通民众很多人都有摄像设备和网络通讯工具,有些事故真相就不象以前那样容易掩盖了。永远说谎的中共黄俄真理部虽然还是象以前一样极力掩盖真相颠倒黑白指鹿为马压制舆论信口雌黄,但面对现代科技的挑战,中共黄俄真理部也已经是力不从心了。垄断是万恶之源。一党独裁,遍地是灾。民不选官,官不为民。全民直选一人一票才是出路。中国人要向突尼斯埃及利比亚也门叙利亚人民学习。唯有中国全民起义才能打倒以世界首富胡匪紧掏为首的中共黄俄特供匪帮。强烈呼吁同样也遭受中共黄俄特供匪帮残酷剥削压榨的千千万万基层共产党员共青团员退出共产党共青团并立即加入中国人民全民反共抗暴的英雄行列。强烈呼吁马英九总统率领台湾军民尽速反攻大陆解救同胞。中国民主革命必胜。中共黄俄特供匪帮必亡。自由民主均富平等博爱的新中国行将到来。无耻残暴黑暗专制丧权辱国卖国求荣腐败无能鱼肉百姓的中共黄俄伪政权必将很快崩溃。
你是因为技术原因还是故意看不到,微博正在毁掉中国年轻人.让他们跪拜审查和删帖,让他们弃明投暗,让他们失去抵抗,最终一网打尽,再无还手之力.
微博上一众名流什么不合作,每天都在帮纳粹诛杀言论做帮凶.
这次温州事件,民愤比以往任何一次都来得厉害,以往保持沉默、后来是冷嘲热讽,再到这次基本就是指名道姓大骂共产党,要求他们滚下台,民心巨变呀!在贴吧也好、微博也好,还有论坛共产党前所未有遭到千夫所指【公开的】。五毛根本不敢露头。
民心已变,这是定局。谁都改变不了。随着今明两年经济彻底崩盘,每个人都将是受害者,物价无限的高涨下去,民不聊生,贪官成灾,酷吏成群,自然灾害不断,各种人祸不停……,民间早就从埋怨转为怨恨,中国社会这个定时炸弹就要爆发了。
97年左右,中國剛開始有互聯網的時候,能上網的幾乎都是知識階層的,因為那時根本不普及,且因為共黨對網路的意識、技術等各種原因還沒管控的時候,早看見人們在BBS上談論公共等事件時,都有幾十條甚至上百條打倒共產黨、共產黨王八蛋等等簡單文字的留言,根本鮮有反駁的言論。總之,後來就管制地越來越嚴酷,還成立了五毛黨!但可見那時候的知識界比現在明白的多,正如八十年代不再來一樣。不過可以證明共產黨在訊息自由面前多麼不得人心和脆弱
看何老师的文章, 我也准备建自己的博客, 并与家人共享, 以备不时之需。 不看这篇文章, 我还真不知道它的威力。
瞧瞧人家日本人做事的细致程度
日本交通事故死亡赔偿标准根据死者年龄和是否家庭主要收入来源者等约为1100万日元(14万美元)至2000万日元(26万美元)之间。
一些事故遗属认为这是一起社会责任事故,不应按一般交通事故赔偿,近40名主张“赔偿额应由遗属决定”的遗属到去年为止还在与JR西日本谈判。
中共这种用黑社会的手段统治中国人,在不久的将来必定要被中国人民扫进历史的垃圾堆的!
十分希望看到何老师分析一下中国的黑暗政治。以这次温州高铁事故为例,面对公众的愤怒,铁道部长,国家副主席,国家主席都没露面,连个屁都没给公众一个。这实在是黑到了极点。但奇怪的是,居然几乎没有人提出这一点。在国内当然不能提,一提就会遭封杀。何老师应当剖析分析一下这种地地道道的黑暗。出了问题,可以多藏在幕后一个声不吭,然后通过中宣部勒令全国,给媒体钳口。
微博在中国的确在显现它的力量,不过某些人正在想扼杀它
现在中国确实微博的力量不错.
AAA没坐和谐号一起翻车真是太遗憾了,祝你一家早点撞死
我就想搞明白一件事,3a你到这里发帖子要不要翻墙?要,你为什么要看党和人民不允许你看的东西?不要,你人在国外享受着国外的一切,确对国内情况指手划脚!要么你有精神疾病,要么你受雇于“人”!说句糙话:你TM是sb!鉴定完毕!话糙理不糙!
愚民几十年,井里的蛤蟆们逐渐觉醒,天文大潮与暴风雨总有一天会叠加,推翻这艘到处漏水的破船