Mainstream Value Information Push Strategy on Chinese Aggregation News Platform: Evolution, Modelling and Analysis

At present, most news aggregation platforms use personalized recommendation technology to push information in China, which is likely to cause the phenomenon of information cocoons. In order to alleviate the occurrence of this phenomenon, this paper studies the issue of mainstream value information push from different perspectives, which can be used as a supplement for personalized recommendation technology to promote the diffusion of mainstream value information. First, we constructed an evolutionary game model to simulate the game process between news aggregation platforms and users. Through the results of evolutionary analysis, the news platform can be guided at a macro level to formulate mainstream value information push strategies by adjusting model parameters. Second, we conducted research on user behavior, and the results show that different user groups have different demands for mainstream value information. Third, we constructed two models from the perspective of user demands and platform revenue. Experiments show that user sensitivity to mainstream value information and platform evaluation factors are important for finding the number of mainstream information pushes on each page. Finally, we investigated the effect of the mainstream value information from Toutiao. The survey results are consistent with the viewpoints presented in this paper.

“You Need At Least One Picture Daily, if Not, You’re Dead”: Content Creators and Platform Evolution in the Social Media Ecology

Despite extensive literature on content creators’ identities, strategies, and activities, there remains a gap in understanding how the constantly changing platform environment impacts their brand subjectivities. Against this backdrop, our article explores how evolutions in platforms—including constant updates to their affordances—shape the activities and interpretive processes of content creators. Drawing on interviews with 35 Chilean content creators in the field of fashion and lifestyle, along with an analysis of their Instagram images ( N = 165) and stories ( N = 150), we show how creators feel compelled to enact different versions of their brand subjectivities. Our findings show how creators experience platform changes based on three interrelated levels: in the form of communicative styles, as a sense of temporal acceleration, and as a constant negotiation with other actors in the social network through which commercial activities are configured. Thus, when platforms tend to make changes to improve their commercial viability, content creators have to adapt their brand subjectivities and practices across platforms and affordances. In addition to shedding light on the new routines and intensified economic pressures demanded of today’s digital workers, we also reveal how the ideal of creation has been supplanted with intensified competition amid constantly changing technological, social, and commercial ecologies.