Feedback method of mass communication

Lack of feedback resources in mass communication and its countermeasures

Fan kui

Due to the characteristics of mass communication and the subjective reasons of both parties, feedback in mass communication has certain limitations, but as an important communication resource, feedback must be valued and effectively developed. This paper analyzes the significance and characteristics of feedback in mass communication, and puts forward some countermeasures on how to develop feedback resources.

[Keywords:] mass media audience feedback

Because the New York Herald hosted by jealous Bennett always sends out news that interests the public, Raymond, editor-in-chief of The New York Times, once said with emotion, "I would rather pay $654.38 million+$00,000, if I can let the devil tell me every night, just like telling Bennett what new york people like to read best tomorrow morning." It is true that this anecdote in American news history reveals that their media caters to the audience blindly, but communication seeks communication. Only by understanding the needs of the audience can we achieve effective communication, which is in line with the law of communication. Of course, there is no "devil", but "what do people like to read tomorrow morning" is not unknown. The key is that the communicator should pay attention to the feedback from the audience, which is an important basis for communication.

Feedback and its significance

Feedback is an important concept in cybernetics, which means that after the control system outputs information, the result of the information will return to the control system, which will have an impact on the re-output of the control system. In this cycle, information constantly changes its content and realizes control. Weiner, the founder of cybernetics, said, "This control principle is not only applicable to the Panama Canal, but also to the country, the army and individuals ... This social feedback problem is of great sociological and anthropological significance", but the early communication research did not involve the feedback link. The earliest mode of communication was linear and one-way, and the audience was regarded as the terminal of information, and the information did not flow back. The previous research on the effect called "bullet theory" thought that the audience was completely passive and had no independent psychology and behavior. 1954 inspired by osgood's viewpoint, Shi Lamu established the circulation mode of communication and began to mention the feedback in the process of communication. He believes that communication is not a linear process from one point to another, but an interactive cycle process, and the communication of the communicator and the response of the audience constitute the route of interactive cycle. In 1960s, the communication model constructed by German scholar Malezke includes six elements: disseminator, information, media, audience, pressure and restriction from the media and audience's impression on the media, among which the audience's reaction is regarded as one of the elements of communication. In 1990s, Reisen, a communication scholar, pointed out that feedback represents the audience's response to all aspects of communication after decoding, and it is a responsibility of the audience. It can be seen that with the development of communication, feedback research is also deepening.

The essence of communication is a two-way process of mutual communication, communication and influence between the communicator and the audience, and the value of communication is realized in the interaction between the communicator and the audience. Only by understanding the feedback link of the audience can we truly restore the complete communication process and reveal the two-way nature of human communication. At the same time, feedback is the main way for the audience to participate in communication activities, which highlights the initiative of the audience. In the feedback link, the audience changed from "sink" to "source", and the response to information (including the views on the content, form, value and behavior of the communicator) was fed back to the communicator, which realized the dialogue with the communicator and affected the subsequent communication. Therefore, feedback research is an important part of audience research, which helps to understand the real status and role of audience in communication.

For communication practice, first of all, feedback is a bridge between the sender and the receiver, especially in mass communication, the audience is hidden and uncertain, and the communicator needs feedback information very much to understand the audience. Secondly, feedback information is the main basis for communicators to adjust their follow-up communication activities. Communicators seek the gap between the actual communication and the audience's expectation through feedback information, so as to continuously improve the communication mode, effectively increase the consistency of communication in the understanding of meaning at both ends of communication, and achieve the effect of communication. Thirdly, feedback is a practical means to evaluate the communication effect. This kind of evaluation from the audience is more objective and helps to correct the deviation of the communicator's self-evaluation. Fourthly, the focus of communication is increasingly becoming the trend of modern communication, and the role of feedback is more prominent. The essence of differentiated communication is to subdivide the information market. The standard of segmentation is the different needs of the audience, and feedback information is an important source to understand the needs of the audience. Fifth, the audience not only has the right to know, but also has the right to express opinions and supervise the media through the media. Feedback is the main way for the audience to exercise this right of media contact and media supervision.

Feedback in mass communication

As an important communication resource, feedback plays a unique regulatory role in the process of communication. However, in the practice of mass communication, feedback is a weak link, and communicators do not attach great importance to the development of feedback resources, and the role of feedback is very limited. Analyze the reasons, mainly as follows:

First of all, there is a "congenital deficiency" in feedback in mass communication, which is brought about by the characteristics of mass communication itself. Mass communication is peer-to-peer communication, the disseminator is a specific point and organized organization, and the audience is a large number of uncertain faces, which are hidden, scattered, mixed and changeable, making it impossible for the disseminator to obtain systematic and comprehensive audience feedback information; At the same time, there is always a certain space-time distance between the communicator and the receiver. Mass media is a material tool to communicate with both parties, which makes the relationship between the communicator and the receiver indirect, so it is difficult for both parties to communicate directly, and the audience will not have the opportunity to express their feedback to the communicator face to face. In this communication pattern, it is impossible to produce direct, timely and comprehensive feedback like face-to-face interpersonal communication, while the feedback in mass communication is usually indirect, lagging and scattered. "In mass communication, the source (communicator) can only get limited or indirect feedback from the audience" (2), which is its inherent limitation.

From the audience's point of view, the audience's first need to participate in communication is to receive information, not feedback information. Even when using interactive media such as the Internet, the audience mainly uses its convenient search function to find applicable information, rather than taking the initiative to speak as a source of feedback. Whether information can be actively fed back is subject to many factors, such as the activity of the audience, understanding ability, expression ability and the convenience of feedback channels. Therefore, on the whole, the active feedback from the audience is always rare, and the feedback from individual viewers is often more emotional than rational. These scattered, limited, non-statistical information, even more emotional than rational feedback information, often can not effectively represent the general opinions of the public, and have no ready-made reference value for communicators, which need to be sorted out and analyzed by communicators, especially to track the accumulated feedback.

From the perspective of communicators, some studies show that "communicators are most concerned about the reflection of colleagues and bosses on communication, followed by the reflection of news sources, and the' image' of ordinary audiences does not occupy an important position in their minds". "Audience orientation" is mostly a decorative concept, which can't get a realistic response. Communicators either organize and transmit information according to their own subjective intentions, or follow the so-called lowest common multiple principle, and take the imaginary public taste as the basis of communication. Theoretically, "the audience is the source of feedback information in the process of communication, which determines the strengthening, turning and interruption of certain information dissemination" (4). In fact, few news organizations will arrange enough staff to deal with all kinds of feedback information in time, and communicators will rarely change their communication intentions and strategies according to the feedback from the audience, and most of them just make some local adjustments to the communication forms and techniques. It can be seen that the communicator did not really put the feedback from the audience in the important link of communication operation.

On the other hand, due to the unbalanced grasp of the media by both sides, their space and status in the communication channel are not equal, and the communicators are always in the position of priority and control. Therefore, in the face of the huge mysterious and uncontrollable media machine, it is easy for the audience to lose their enthusiasm for dialogue and give up their right to dialogue, while the communicator can easily control the feedback from the audience. As a gatekeeper, communicators will also check the feedback link according to their own needs, for example, they will carefully design the content of the questionnaire, arrange the scope of the investigation, and guide the topics spread by the hotline, so as to obtain their expected feedback information. At the same time, feedback information will be filtered out, most negative feedback will be filtered out, and positive feedback and a few irrelevant negative feedback will be spread through the media, which can not only beautify the image of the media, but also serve as an incentive to attract more communicators to expect but not necessarily true feedback information.

Therefore, in mass communication, the communicator's communication behavior plays an active role, and the audience's feedback behavior plays a passive role. The value determination, response and diffusion of feedback information are all determined by the disseminator, and the audience can do nothing. Cybernetics has clearly pointed out that the purpose of feedback is to achieve more effective control, and the feedback in mass communication is often used by communicators to produce new purposeful behaviors after adjustment. From this point of view, feedback seems to be more conducive to the closure of communication channels, rather than strengthening the interaction between communication and reception, and its significance is greatly reduced.

From the above analysis, we can see that the feedback in mass communication is indirect, delayed, limited and sometimes even controlled. Shi Lamu's circulation model implies that both parties are completely equal and information is transmitted back and forth equally, which is not in line with the reality of mass communication.

How to develop feedback resources

Communication without feedback information is blind. With the development of mass media market and media technology, the status of the audience is constantly improving, and the needs of the audience have become the main starting point of communication, and the feedback from the audience is no longer dispensable. Although feedback in mass communication has characteristics and limitations different from interpersonal communication, some of them are brought by this mode of communication itself, and some are caused by insufficient attention and participation of both parties. Understanding these characteristics and limitations is precisely to seek targeted countermeasures for developing feedback resources.

First of all, both the sender and the receiver of ideas should establish the consciousness of "two-way communication". "Communication is a process of equal interaction between people, and its basic premise is mutual recognition of the subject status of all parties in communication". In this mutual confirmation, the communicator should confirm the subject status of the other party more, and realize that there is a relationship of "* * *", "mutual construction" and "equality" with the audience, rather than the relationship between subject and object. Both the receiver and the disseminator are the subjects of communication, and the interaction between them constitutes the real communication. Only in this way can communicators regard the feedback from the audience as an integral part of the whole communication process, and then take the feedback information as the main basis for choosing the content, viewpoint and mode of communication. For the audience, it is mainly to confirm their subjective status and realize that they are active participants and effective constraints in communication activities, not just passive recipients of information. They can express their information needs, supervise the behavior of communicators and evaluate the content of communication through positive feedback, and jointly build a convective, healthy, beneficial, fair and balanced information environment with communicators.

On the operational level, the first is to increase the development of interpersonal level of mass communication and enhance the participation and communication of mass communication. In practice, the setting of program hosts and their conscious approach to the common people's views, the popularity of talk shows, the opening of hotlines and various audience columns can all be regarded as the mechanism and advantages of introducing interpersonal communication in mass communication, and pursuing a friendly and humanized communication pattern. Only in this communication pattern can positive audience feedback be possible.

Second, build a complete feedback system. In a narrow sense, feedback only refers to the opinions and information sent by the audience to the disseminator. The generalized feedback also includes the opinion information obtained by media organizations from the audience and the relevant information provided by investigation organizations independent of the media. Therefore, a complete feedback system should include the channels of active feedback from the audience, the media's own investigation institutions and the investigation and supervision institutions independent of the media. The positive feedback from the audience is true, but it is scattered. The investigation activities of media investigation agencies are professional, systematic and targeted, but inevitably subjective. The investigation and supervision institutions independent of the media are more objective. Only by learning from each other's strengths can we build an effective feedback system, attract a steady stream of feedback, and obtain real, reliable and systematic feedback information.

Third, dredge and expand feedback channels to facilitate the audience's information feedback. The mass media should allocate more space and time for the audience to express their views and opinions. In addition, in the new media environment, in addition to accepting letters from the audience, receiving visitors, opening hotlines, readers' columns, conducting questionnaires, conducting individual interviews, using instruments and other traditional feedback channels, we should also make full use of online media to build an information feedback platform. At present, the traditional media take the Internet as a new channel for information dissemination, and collect less feedback from the audience. Even if a few websites have audience portals, they are mostly used as decorations, and there are not enough people to communicate with the audience. In fact, the advantages of the network as a feedback channel are very obvious. The fast, convenient, highly open and two-way interactive mode similar to interpersonal communication will help to improve the audience's subjective participation and overcome the weaknesses of mass communication feedback such as delay, indirectness and controllability. At the same time, the forms of online feedback are also rich and varied, such as e-mail, chat rooms, news forums, bulletin boards, real-time communication hosted online, etc. Free and diverse forms can better mobilize the enthusiasm of netizens to "speak". Therefore, developing the feedback platform function of media websites can, on the one hand, make up for the shortage that media websites are only copies of traditional media for the time being, gain new growth points and expand the influence of traditional media and websites. On the other hand, we can turn delayed, indirect and negative feedback into timely, "face-to-face" and positive feedback, and keep close contact with the audience.

Fourth, scientifically collect and process feedback information. Media organizations should set up a special information feedback department, arrange professional and sufficient manpower, systematically use the theories and methods of statistics, mathematics and sociology, scientifically plan and design the objectives, methods and steps of the survey, establish a feedback information base, incorporate the information obtained from the survey and the feedback opinions of individual audiences into the information base, edit, sort out, number, summarize and analyze, find out the internal relations among them, and explore the level of audience demand.

Fifth, treat different types of feedback correctly. We should not only pay attention to the feedback information actively sought by the media, but also pay attention to the information actively fed back by the individual audience. We should not only listen to the feedback from experts, but also take the feedback from the general audience as a reference. Accept positive (positive) feedback and negative (negative) feedback. "Please note that positive feedback does not mean good feedback; Actually, it may be a bad feedback. And negative feedback is not necessarily' bad', because it is necessary for the system to maintain balance.

Finally, the operation of the feedback mechanism should be regular and institutionalized. "What do people like to read tomorrow morning" does not mean "What do people like to read the next morning", and the needs and interests of the audience are always changing. Therefore, collecting and processing feedback information is not a phased work of the media. Media organizations should conduct audience surveys regularly, set up fixed audience columns, and track feedback information for a long time, so that the feedback mechanism can operate effectively for a long time and become an indispensable part of communication.

Author: Chinese Department of Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 3 10023.