A Study Of The Late Qing Dynasty Plague In Northeast China And The Infodemic Under The Narrative Of Newspaper Media Based On It

At a time when COVID-19 is normalized,the COVID-19 virus is attacking the physical and mental health of people at home and abroad,and the large amount of indistinguishable and complicated information circulating on social media platforms is also attacking the public cognitive system like a virus and threatening the public’s psychological health,which is known as the infodemic.However,infodemic is not new in the social media era,the infodemic of the newspaper media era can be explored from the reports of the newspaper media in a plague in the Northeast a century ago.This study is divided into four chapters.In the first chapter,firstly,the events of the plague in the years of Geng-xu and Xin-hai are summarized,and the concept of infodemic is defined,and the theory of cognitive dissonance is proposed,combined with this theory,the internal and external conditions for the formation of infodemic in the plague were sorted out.The rise of "new media" newspapers and periodicals provided a media basis for the wide spread of information,the existing epidemic prevention experience and cultural tradition of the people have been affected by epidemic information,resulting in cognitive dissonance.In the second chapter,the reporting framework of five newspapers and periodicals at home and abroad is sorted out.It is found that the reports related to plague are massive and mixed,and the reports on plague subject of domestic newspapers and foreign newspapers have both commonness and individuality,these newspapers both focus on the latest developments in the plague,but also serve the political forces behind them.The third chapter dismantles the infodemic under the newspaper narratives based on the reports related to the epidemic,and finds that rumors,fake news,and conspiracy theories are the main contents that contribute to the infodemic.Among them,rumors about people’s livelihoods led to the disorder of epidemic prevention and quarantine;medical rumors provided obstacles to the scientific determination of the origin and treatment of plague;political rumors provoked negative emotions among the public by creating conflicts between the government and the public;and the proliferation of fake news,either by oversight or by accident,sapped the credibility of the media and fostered public fears;rumors about "war between China and Russia" and "war between China and Russia" and "conspiracy theories" were the main contributors to the infodemic.Conspiracy theories such as "there will be a war between China and Russia","there will be a war between China and Japan" and "the virus originated from the Japanese poisoning" are difficult to subside and undermine people’s sense of security.The last chapter explores the generation mechanism of infodemic by drawing on the narrative framework of domestic and foreign newspapers and the specific manifestations of infodemic in the plague incident,that is,based on a large number of positive and negative information which are hard to distinguish true from false,the massive amount of reports creates information anxiety,the death issue incites panic and anxiety,and the negative attributes influence the direction of public opinion.The clarity of the generation mechanism of infodemic is of great significance for preventing and managing the current infodemic from the perspective of the media.First,the media can strengthen fact checking,reduce the spread of false information and avoid increasing public disorder;second,improve reporting strategies,increase cognitive factors and alleviate social anxiety;third,purify the communication environment,to guard against the trap of stigma,we can guide public opinion through two channels: active construction of mainstream media and strong response.