A Review of Conceptual and Literature Review on News Reversal Phenomenon

In recent years, with the development of information technology, society has entered the digital age. In such a new media environment, a new type of news phenomenon emerges as the times require. With the media scrambling to report and the gradual development of the incident, the truth finally confirmed through various channels is quite different from the initial media reports. This is the "news reversal" phenomenon that has begun to affect the social behavior of Chinese netizens. Due to the fact that this phenomenon appeared late and there is no definite research school or representative figure, the overall research is relatively shallow. On the one hand, while clarifying the definition and significance of news reversal, it explores the research angle of news reversal phenomenon in China and other countries. On the other hand, it summarizes the shortcomings of the current research on news reversal phenomenon, and discusses the future research direction.


Introduction
Mass media has always affected the living environment of human beings, whether it is politics, economy or culture. Human are moving towards an increasingly digital, mobile and social media environment, and the competition for attention has become more intense. The news discourse monopoly of traditional media has been quickly broken, and digital media technology has greatly boosted the development of media. The 4G media (smart device Internet) and 5G (mobile Internet) have become the main media, enabling citizens to enjoy more Media Access Rights. Therefore, in the new media era , news has begun to show a more prominent and universal publicity. The popularity of new media has given birth to a new way of news dissemination, and the traditional one-way communication mode has become a multi-way or interactive communication mode .
It is in such an environment that the news reversal phenomenon is bred. Regarding the research on news reversal phenomenon, there are two meanings of reality and theory at the same time.
From a theoretical perspective, this study provides a fresh perspective for news reversal research because the existing monographs on reversal news are not perfect, and most of them focus on journal papers, no comprehensive and systematic research has been formed. And its focus is mostly on the media's corresponding strategy after the emergence of reversal news. And most of the scholars' research is to discuss the news reversal phenomenon in China, and even regard this phenomenon as a unique phenomenon in China, without learning from foreign research results. In general, so far, no one has comprehensively and dialectically studied the research results of reverse news from different perspectives in China and Western countries. Therefore, the author's research fills in the gaps in existing research to a certain extent.
From a practical point of view, this study expects to introduce the news reversal phenomenon to the public in more detail, and provide suggestions for eliminating the negative effects of reversal news.
The development of the Internet has brought great changes to the field of news dissemination, which has also contributed to the occurrence of news reversal events. However, judging from the current situation, due to factors such as fragmentation and emotionality of communication, news reversal has many negative effects: it breeds cyber violence, causes adverse effects on the parties involved, and seriously endangers the credibility of the media, especially the official media. This article starts from the different research perspectives of Chinese and foreign news reversals, hoping to popularize and introduce this phenomenon to the public. Only by understanding the emergence of the phenomenon and dialectically examining the causes of the news reversal phenomenon can we propose countermeasures against the negative impact of the audience, the media, and society.

The Concept of News Reversal
In today's new media environment, a new type of news phenomenon has emerged, and it is showing increasing momentum. A hot event with a high degree of attention, with the media's scramble to report and the gradual development of the event, the truth of the event, which was finally confirmed through various channels, is very different from the original media reports. Some even reversed right and wrong, confused black and white, and eventually evolved into an unexpected situation. The origin of "reversal" is a Korean variety show "X-man" (one of the classic variety shows of South Korea's SBS TV station, which premiered in 2003. Liu Zaishi, Jiang Hudong, Kim Jong-kook, and HAHA served as MCs). There is a short play in the program, which is named "reversal play" because of its compact plot and the contrast between the ending and the audience's imagination (Liu, 2014). Later, Chinese scholars introduced it into the field of journalism and communication research. Scholars have cleverly combined "news", "public opinion" and "reversal" to describe news that the results of some news events are quite different from the audience's previous assumptions (Li & Wu,2022). Or netizens' evaluation of the event during an emergency, with the understanding of the truth, there will be a phenomenon of bipolar evaluation.
News reversal is a new phenomenon based on the development of new media. The earliest record of news reversals comes from the first statistics of news reversals by the Public Opinion Monitoring Office of People's Daily Online in 2011; and the complete statistics and presentation of news reversals occurred in 2013 and 2014, respectively. Published the top ten news reversal dramas that were hot spots in the year; in 2015, the news reversal phenomenon appeared more frequently, "Chengdu female driver was beaten", "Yunnan tour guide insulted tourists", "Shanghai elementary school students held umbrellas for teachers" Many news reversal incidents have triggered heated discussions in the society, formed a strong upsurge of public opinion, and triggered long-term and active discussions in all walks of life. The Public Opinion Monitoring Office of People's Daily Online also counted 15 typical public opinion reversal events in 2015 at the end of the year; in the first half of 2016, in just half a year, there were 20 news reversal events that aroused great social concern.Various news reversal plots are still being staged, and related research has sprung up like mushrooms after rain.
After a fuzzy search of the article title of "News Reversal" in China HowNet, it was found that the research on the phenomenon of news reversal began at the end of 2013, and there was only one media commentary , 5 in 2014, 18 in 2015, and 98 in 2016. It is not difficult to see that in recent years, the research attention on news reversal has been increasing, and the growth rate is very rapid. Especially in 2016, the related research has heated up very fast, and it has become a major research hotspot in the journalism and communication circle.According to statistics, by the beginning of 2023, there are 625 papers in total, and this number is still growing.
However, although the research on news reversal has become a hot topic, and the overall quantity of related researches is increasing rapidly, judging from the quality of papers and the distribution of authors, most of them are sporadic researches by individual researchers, Han(2021) claimed that due to the short research time, no schools of thought have been formed about news reversal phenomenon in China.There are no representative works and representative figures, and no mature system and system have been formed. This is the biggest deficiency and limitation of the current research on News reversal.

The Research Perspective on News Reversal Phenomenon in Western Countries
In terms of foreign research, there are almost no English concepts that are directly equivalent to "News reversal".But a phenomenon does not appear in a vacuum, and news reversal is an emerging field of research that continues to grow in the context of new media news. Although it is a relatively new field in some fields of study, it has been derived and developed from previous fields and theories dating back decades.
There are many theoretical achievements worthy of reference for public opinion research. The author selects the following four field of thought to illustrate.

Analysis of related research on news reversal from the perspective of Agenda Setting Theory
Lippmann stated that news media influence the images in our mindsand (Lippmann&Curtis,2017).After that, American communication scientists McCombs and Shaw formally put forward the agenda setting theory in Public Opinion Quarterly. "The public knows events or issues through the media, thinks from the perspective of the media prompts, and follows the media's emphasis on various issues. to adjust their own perceptions of the importance of these issues, or that the media's emphasis on something is directly proportional to the public's emphasis on the same thing." (McCombs & Valenzuela , 2020).
In the new media era, the characteristics and causes of Internet Agenda Setting theory contributed to the news reversal phenomenon.With the development of the Internet selfmedia platform has made the public pay attention to the topics they are interested in, and the reversal of public opinion stems from the audience's in-depth excavation of the topic.

Analysis of related research on news reversal from the perspective of Gatekeeper Theory
1950s, scholar White applies Gatekeeper theory to journalism, and proposes that the reporting activities of the news media are not "reporting what is heard", but a process of choosing, selecting and processing many news materials (Bro & Wallberg,2015). Screening gates selectively deliver news information to news audiences (Shabir et al., 2015). In the era of new media, the gatekeeper role of traditional media is weakened, and everyone can publish news.However, the audiences do not have professional media literacy, which makes news released without strict review, and exacerbates the phenomenon of public opinion reversal (Molina et al., 2021).

Analysis of related research on news reversal from the perspective of Silent spiral effect
Noelle-Neumann believed that the public opinion of the majority has a great influence on the formation of personal opinions, and individuals who have the same opinions as the majority tend to express their opinions boldly and actively, on the contrary, they tend to remain silent (Sohn, 2022). With the change of the media environment, Masullo & Duchovnay (2022) investigated that because of the anonymity of online social media, both the spiral of silence and the spiral of anti-silence will appear in the network.That the formation of public opinion lacks objective thinking, and the audience is easily misguided. Stimson(2018) maintained in the current public opinion environment, people will tend to choose the opinions of the majority to go along.The phenomenon of news reversal is formed because most does not necessarily represent the truth.

Analysis of related research on news reversal from the perspective of Group polarization
The theory of group polarization mainly states that the attitudes of individual members are strengthened or even more extreme after being encouraged by the group, and due to the anonymity of the network society, the probability of group polarization in the network society is higher, and even extreme (Interian & Rodrigues, 2023)."Public opinion" can be manipulated in a sense.Although everyone has an equal right to speak on the Internet, once the "irrational" characteristics of Group polarization are used and manipulated by some "Internet marketers" and "Opinion leaders", it is easy to form public opinion reversal and cause the majority of people of public opinion violence.

The research perspective on news reversal phenomenon in China
At present, research on the phenomenon of news reversal in China often starts from three perspectives: characteristics, causes and impacts.

Research on the characteristics of News reversal
Reversing news is mostly the first feature of this phenomenon. The top ten reversal news from the People's Daily Online is social news. Some of the strange things in social news are more likely to attract the attention of the audience. Most of the social news is closely related to the lives of the people. Many strange things are also social news. Compared with other news, it is closer to the audience, according to the topicality.In addition, some scholars believe that "social news itself is more interesting and humane, so it is easy to imbalance in news expression and conduct subjective reports and speculation." (Zhu , 2017;Li, 2017;Ma, 2018). In the news report "Hangzhou Girl was accepted by Harvard", some media reporters deliberately used the "Poor girl" in the report in order to attract the audience's attention.
The description of the characters labeling in the reversal news is the main characteristic of the phenomenon of news reversal. Most of the protagonists of the news reversal incident are some labeling groups such as college students, aunts, doctors, rich second generations, and official second generations.This information is widely disseminated and believed because the public's inherent attitude towards some groups, but the real situation is often contrary to people's stereotypes.
With the development of the media, traditional media is no longer the only release platform for news. Many news come from portal or folk portal . This kind of breaking news often has not been investigated and verified, but it is very attractive to the audience. Under the dissemination of the fission of the new media, the news that has not been verified has attracted widespread concern. Once reversal news, a large number of information was quickly reposted and shared, which made the public contact news that was completely inconsistent with content in a short period of time. It was not until the truth of the incident revealed that public opinion reversed.

Research on the Cause of News Reversal
In the era of traditional media, media compilation and distribution of news reports generally go through the "three instances, three schools" process, and this institutional arrangement effectively guarantees the quality of news. In the era of new media, with the changes in the media pattern and communication methods, traditional media are seeking transformation and development . When all kinds of self -media competition, most of them hope to obtain greater communication Influence and better economic benefits.In this case, some media have begun to deviate from the professional spirit of the news, compress the role of the personnel, reduce the review standards, and launch hidden dangers for the reversal of the news (Ye, 2022).
According to , the news reversal originated from the lack of audience literacy. As the Internet continues to update and develop and diversify mobile phones, everyone has become the recipient and communicator of information. In the face of massive information, the audience is difficult to judge the truth of the incident due to the lack of professional media literacy.At the same time, the influence of anonymity and herd mentality makes the audience dare to express it. In the virtual network world, the emotional expression of the audience is more intense.
With the rapid development of network communication, the emotional expression of social audiences is becoming more and more frequent.Many news draw conclusions before they have been fully confirmed, which will lead the public to make judgments with the help of previous inertial thinking. Deep-rooted stereotypes have become the norm.To form a fixed and generalized view of a certain thing or a certain type of person in the mind. In the face of stereotypes, the audience will usually have sympathy for the weak. This one-sided phenomenon among groups will lead to the continuous participation of the public in public opinion.
The explanations of Hu & Wei (2017) are more innovative. They believe that everyone perceives themselves in the fermentation of Internet events and public opinion, and the direction of public opinion dominated by emotions is elusive, and the logical basis of Internet users' actions is related to traditional culture.

Research on the Impact of News Reversal
Regarding the impact of news reversals, most scholars agree that news reversals are harmful. Wei (2019) believes that news reversals have caused cyber violence to intensify, and believes that news reversals are harmful to the news parties, news media, audiences, and the entire society. At the same time, the reversal of news has led to a continuous decline in the credibility of the media, and the public has a "crisis of trust" in it, which consumes the audience's attention and enthusiasm for public events.
However, despite the absolute advantage of "reversal harmful theory", there are still different voices, news reversal, whether it is the piercing, correction of the fake news of malicious manufacturing, or clarify the fact that the media is wrong or not thoroughly reported in the preliminary report due to objective reasons. The clarification of the facts that are wrong or not thoroughly in the early reports are conducive to revealing the truth and approaching the facts of the facts. Therefore, he believes that there is enough tolerance for the reversal of the news.

Conclusion
It is unavoidable that there are still many deficiencies and challenges in the research of domestic scholars in the field of news reversal.China only started to carry out relevant research in the early 21st century.Combining with the domestic research literature, it can be found that although the attention of "news reversal" is growing rapidly, the overall research volume is still small, it is still in the initial stage of research, and there are no representative researchers. Most of the research results are published in academic journals, and there are no related monographs. The research level is relatively shallow, and the research angle is mainly communication and journalism, mostly event analysis and did not delve into other areas.Western academic circles has made considerable academic achievements in public opinion research, with a large research pattern and rich research perspectives covering the theories of journalism, communication, social psychology and political science.However, in Western research, there is a lack of relevant definitions and research on the new phenomenon of news reversal.Moreover, the unilateral transplant of Western theories lacks case studies that are adapted to the China local environment, and can only provide some onesided understandings. Therefore,when studying new media events, we should study the special situation of Chinese society and the case itself, and combine the phenomenon with the social and historical background to obtain new discoveries.