1 overview

News commentary is the flag and soul of news media and plays a very important role in news propaganda. If news objectively reflects social reality, comments show the media's attitude towards news. Therefore, many traditional media attach great importance to comments and spread the "voice" of themselves and readers. Melvin Deffler, an American communication scholar, said: "The more likely prospect is that computers will be combined with all kinds of modern cable TV to develop new media." [ 1]

Since 1990s, with the rapid development of Internet technology and people's active creation and utilization, the Internet has changed from an information dissemination tool to a media form at an extraordinary speed. The emergence of the Internet has given news commentary a new carrier and amplified its power. By synthesizing the definitions of online news commentary in various academic works on online media and online commentary, this paper summarizes online news commentary as follows: online news commentary is generally a comment on an important news fact or news event with the help of online media.

2 the basic characteristics of online news commentary

Online news comments reflect the basic needs of netizens. First of all, the internet provides a public place for netizens to communicate, and a large number of opinions and opinions are gathered, exchanged and spread through online media; Secondly, netizens express their views through online media and realize their rights and obligations as members of society. Network news commentary has become the link between news commentary and the Internet, which is different from traditional news commentary in content and form.

2. 1 Interaction of online news comments

As a formal concept of communication, interactivity was first put forward by Rafaeli (S. 1987), who tried to link mass communication with interpersonal communication with the concept of interactivity. Online news commentary has broken through the boundary between the roles of disseminator and receiver, making the audience in the traditional sense more and more dominant in the communication process and truly becoming the main body of mass media.

Today's netizens are not only satisfied with consumption, but also show strong participation in online news. In online news comments, interactivity is not only reflected in the interactive behavior of participants, but also mainly reflected in the content of their posts. Its strong interaction has attracted the extensive participation of netizens from all over the world, and it has quickly formed public opinion when major social events occur.

Online news comment can be regarded as an "interactive comment". In terms of interactivity, traditional media, whether newspapers, radio or television, are not comparable to the Internet. Traditional media has also paid more attention to interaction in recent years, but the scale, breadth and depth of its interaction are not as good as the Internet.

2.2 the openness of online news comments

The theory of "free market of opinions" is also applicable to the era of network communication. The communication mode and characteristics of online news commentary interaction are considered to have promoted the formation of "free opinion market" to some extent: "If the establishment of public opinion market has always been the ideal of traditional mass media, then online media forums are approaching this ideal." [2]

Internet provides a vast virtual space for netizens to speak freely. As a kind of communication media, compared with traditional media, the characteristics of free access and anonymity give netizens a sense of psychological security, so they have no scruples about current affairs comments and talk about everything. Internet users' pursuit of open news information transmission and reception has been greatly satisfied on the Internet, which is incomparable to traditional media.

2.3 timeliness of online news comments

In the timeliness of news, online media is much faster than newspapers, and radio or television also has some essential procedures, such as recording, playing, hardware equipment and other restrictions, so the timeliness is not as good as the network. As a part of news, news commentary is very important in timeliness. Especially for the party's news media, because the media speak on behalf of the party, it plays a decisive role in guiding public opinion.

Take the online media's report on the successful launch of Shenzhou 5 manned spacecraft as an example. From 9: 00 on June 5438+00 and 15, 2003 to 5: 00 on June 5438+06 16, 2003, People's Daily launched the live broadcast of "God Five", which broadcasted the news from the front line for the first time and was warmly welcomed by netizens. After the text was broadcast live for 3 1 hour, the number of page visits reached 5 million. Within 24 hours, there were more than 3,000 news items about "Shenzhou 5" on People's Online.

2.4 the expression of public opinion in online news comments

The openness of online news commentary in conveying public opinion is far superior to that of traditional media commentary articles. In the online media forum, netizens' posts and their posts can comprehensively and comprehensively evaluate the original meaning of a news event and its extended views. Many online news comments express people's voices. The network not only provides a stage for netizens to participate in social management, but also promotes the perfection of democracy and legal system.

2.5 the comprehensiveness of online news comments

Comprehensiveness means collecting, that is, collecting relevant news information extensively. With people's understanding of news commentary becoming more and more mature, relying on a single news commentary can no longer meet the needs of netizens, and news commentary is developing towards integration. It requires that with the development of news events, the latest and fastest information should be continuously enriched into special news comments, and the occurrence and development of events should be followed up as quickly as possible. At the same time, horizontal reports and background information related to news events should be included in special news comments.

Three types of online news comments

3. 1 Divided from the main body of online news comments.

(1) Edit Comment

Editorial comments are written by editors, journalists or special commentators of the website or traditional media related to the website, representing the position and viewpoint of the whole website, similar to editorials and commentator articles of traditional media news comments.

(2) Expert opinion

Expert comment is a comment that the website invites experts and scholars from various fields to make on a news event. The experts mentioned here mainly refer to people who specialize in a certain field or problem, and are not limited to professional researchers. Expert comments can be written by experts, interviewed by websites, or directly communicated with experts and netizens, such as online interviews and chat rooms.

(3) User comments

Netizen comments are all kinds of discussions and opinions published by netizens in various forms, from a short comment of one or two sentences to thousands or even tens of thousands of words. Different from the relative authority of editorial comments and expert comments, netizens' comments are arbitrary and free. For the comments of netizens, what we are asking now is not "beneficial" but "harmless".

3.2 From the carrier of online news comments to points

(1) Online News Comment Column

The online news commentary column mainly refers to the commentary articles published by netizens on the internet, which have a certain length and can be written independently, just like the newspaper's speech column. This kind of comment is an important news event reported by netizens through browsing online media, or to reason and put forward some opinions on social hot issues. For example, People's Daily quits its news commentary column, People's Commentary, and publishes signed articles every day to comment on the focus of public opinion, the hot spots that the people care about, and the work priorities of the party and the government.

(2) instant comments by netizens

Internet users' instant comments refer to the quick response to an interesting news item when browsing the news, with unlimited length, and one or two sentences are seen by many people. This form is not available in the newspaper. Netizens can express their opinions freely and conveniently in instant comments, highlighting the interactive characteristics of network communication. Every news item on Sina has a "comment" link behind it. Com, you can interact with the news you watch in time.

(3) Internet forums

Internet forums and bulletin board system (BBS) are places for netizens to express their opinions, discuss confrontation and publish online news commentary articles around topics that have been launched by online editors. They use the interactive characteristics of the Internet to create a new form, which is a powerful public information service on the Internet, providing an unprecedented space for public opinion diversity for the real society. The People's Network "Powerful Country Forum" is the most typical in this respect. It gives users the right to express international and domestic events and becomes a distribution center for news, opinions and people's voices. Moreover, the Forum of Powerful Countries has broken through the uniformity of public opinion and is a convincing window for the process of socialist democratization in China.

4. Guidance and management of online news comments

4. 1 Problems in online news comments

(1) The weakening of the agenda setting function of online media

Agenda-setting theory means that the mass media choose and highlight some topics, making these topics the focus of public discussion and forming the public opinion or social sentiment expected by the media [3]. In the traditional media, the limited information and various powerful news information means determine and influence various discussion centers to a great extent. However, on the Internet, the autonomy of netizens to receive and publish information greatly weakens the agenda-setting function of online media as a mass media, and agenda-setting plays a vital role in guiding public opinion.

(2) Language is irrational and easy to go to extremes.

Because of the virtuality and concealment of the network, the risk of publishing news or comments on the network is very small, which makes a few people with ulterior motives dare to spread all kinds of false, unhealthy and harmful news and comments to the country and political parties. The freedom of the internet also makes people's comments on the internet sometimes unrestricted by social norms. In addition, lax management and lack of supervision function on the Internet have also facilitated some false statements, irresponsibility and even false statements, which have caused a bad social impact and aroused people's suspicion, disgust and even rebellion against the Internet.

(3) The disadvantages of online media compared with traditional media.

Although the information on the Internet is extremely rich, the first source of most information is still traditional media. A lot of social information, especially important news information, is in the hands of traditional media, which are the main producers and providers of news raw materials. On the other hand, for online media, there are not only policy obstacles in establishing their own news editing team, but more importantly, it is difficult to cultivate a well-trained team of online journalists in a short time. In addition, traditional news rules, news practice, news experience and public awareness are all lacking in online news commentary compared with traditional media commentary.

4.2 the guidance of online news comments

One of the main functions of news commentary is to guide public opinion. The biggest advantage of online news commentary in guiding public opinion lies in that it transfers the right to speak and judge of the media to the public, changes the situation that media speech dominated the world in the past, and forms a virtuous circle in which public opinion supervises society and the public supervises public opinion, thus promoting the socialization, openness and democratization of public opinion supervision power. Like traditional media, online media should insist on using Theory of Three Represents to guide the party's news propaganda work, adhere to the party spirit principle of news work, and earnestly implement the "three closeness" principle of news propaganda. In terms of guidance methods, there are mainly the following.

(1) Strengthen the "agenda setting" function of online media.

The "agenda setting" of online media is to consciously design the topics and themes of the forum according to the topic setting theory of mass communication to guide public opinion. Moreover, there is interaction between online news comments and topic setting, and the opinions of netizens can be collected, edited and published by online media, thus having a deeper impact on the set topics and further guiding public opinion.

(2) Use online media to guide public opinion.

Zou Taofen said: "Although speech can produce the power of public opinion, not all speech can produce the power of public opinion. The power of public opinion can only happen on the basis of correct facts and fair judgment. " [4] It can be seen that to guide public opinion, we must use correct and instructive remarks. Internet forum is an important gathering place for online speech. Therefore, online media should actively set up online forums to expand their influence. The forum should also provide netizens with a correct direction of speech, encourage and support their opinions, and actively guide and correct incorrect opinions.

(3) Providing news reports and guiding public opinion.

Using news reports to guide public opinion is to provide new news facts in speech columns or forums to guide public opinion. When selecting new news reports, online media should skillfully screen and select news events, so that they can form a public opinion tendency that is beneficial to their own, and they can also use the opinions of authoritative experts to tilt public opinion to their own. When there is a tendency of public opinion that is not conducive to you, you should add some other remarks in time to alleviate the unfavorable situation, and then actively adjust the ways and means.

4.3 Management of online news comments

For online news commentary, if it is allowed to develop irregularly, it will seriously affect the public opinion environment of society and be extremely unfavorable to the stability and unity of the country and society. Therefore, it is necessary to strictly and effectively manage online news comments.

(1) Organization and management of professional management institutions

At present, the management of Internet in China involves the cooperation and cooperation of the Central Propaganda Department, the State Council Press Office, Ministry of Information Industry and Ministry of Culture. The State Council also set up a leading group for informatization in the State Council on 1997, which is responsible for coordinating and solving major Internet problems and formulating specific management measures.

From the perspective of administrative management, the more functional departments involved in a problem, the more complicated it is to manage, and it may also cause loopholes and confusion in management to a certain extent, and there will be overlaps or gaps in the implementation of functions. Therefore, it is necessary to organize a special organization to organize all these management functions and conduct unified management.

(2) Establish standardized Internet laws and regulations.

Since 2000, the state has successively promulgated a number of Internet management laws and regulations, such as the Measures for the Administration of Internet Information Services and the Regulations on the Administration of Internet Bulletin Board Services, which have imposed a series of restrictions and norms on the provision of network information services. However, relying only on such an administrative regulation, such a department is still too thin. The management of online speech involves many issues such as technology and content. It needs an authoritative department to take the lead and organize relevant departments to jointly formulate a relatively systematic norm, and finally form relevant legislation.

(3) Self-management of netizens

In online news comments, especially in online forums, the majority of netizens are the real protagonists. Without the active participation of netizens, online forums are not called forums, and the atmosphere of the whole forum also comes from the overall quality of netizens. The self-management of netizens is the self-restraint of netizens, and it is the method, way and scale for online discussion and expression of opinions. Forum moderators can invite popular, capable and managerial netizens to participate in the management of the forum, and can also create "opinion leaders" among netizens. This practice can not only enliven the forum, improve the enthusiasm of netizens to participate, but also be beneficial to the management of the forum.

5 abstract

With the rapid development of internet technology and online media, the development of online news commentary in China has made remarkable achievements, but overall, it is still in its infancy. It is a very important task for us to further improve the level of online news comments.

News website is an important public opinion tool for the party and the country, and online news commentary is an important part of the party's propaganda cause and an important force to participate in international public opinion competition. In order to become an important position to spread advanced culture, online news commentary must adhere to the correct public opinion orientation, be close to reality, life and the masses, be distinctive and standard, and actively innovate in content and form, so as to be invincible in the fierce competition.

References:

Melvin Devereux. Introduction to mass communication [M]. Beijing: Xinhua Publishing House, 1990: 106.

[2] Kim. Pragmatic network news [M]. Beijing: Beijing Broadcasting Institute Press, 200 1: 248.

[3] Zhang Longdong. Introduction to mass communication [M]. Beijing: Renmin University of China Press, 1993: 178.

[4] Mu Xin. Tao Fen's Collection of Journalism [M]. Beijing: Xinhua Publishing House, 1985.