地理距离对互联网社会中网络信息传播的影响

The influence of geographical distance on the dissemination of internet information in the internet society

随着互联网技术的高速发展,地理距离在信息化时代下是否仍然起作用引起了争议,地理距离是否已死成为关系到地理学科安身立命的重大命题。本文选取两档具有代表性的综艺节目为例,基于网络上的节目百度指数测度节目的信息关注度,分析节目关注度的时空变化,检验地理距离对信息关注的影响。结果表明,在控制其他因素后,地理距离在网络信息传播与接收中仍然起到不可忽视的作用,即离播出地区距离越远,节目关注度越低,尤其在信息传播初期更为明显;随着时间的向后推移,地理距离的作用也在逐渐变弱。研究认为,即使在即时信息传播的互联网时代,包括地理距离在内的地理因素仍然至关重要。

In the era of "internet society" premised upon new telecommunications and information technologies, there is a perennial debate on whether geographical distance still plays a role in spatial phenomena, and this has been deemed as a cornerstone of geographical research. To empirically tackle this recurring conundrum, this paper proposes an analytical framework to interpret how geographical distance affects information dissemination, which has always been portrayed to be instantaneous spreading across space by information technique. To be specific, we suggest that closer geographical distance could lead to better information dissemination through two entwined paths: geographical proximity is related to geographical and cultural homogeneity on the one hand, and lowers the cost of physical transport and nonphysical links, which would facilitate intercity dissemination, on the other hand. As the former has been widely recognized in previous studies, in this paper we mainly focus on testing the latter path. That is, the influence of geographical distance on the attention to information still remains, after controlling regional characteristics and socio-economic attributes of the audiences. Taking two Chinese TV shows as examples, this paper measures the degree of information attention based on the Baidu Index, as well as maps its spatio-temporal changes. To understand the impact of the changing role of geographical distance over time, we perform OLS regressions at four phases from the first broadcasting of the two programs. The result verifies that geographical distance still plays a significant role in the attention and reception of information during the entire period. The degree of audience’s attention decreases as the distance from programs’ birthplaces increases. The resistance of geographical distance,however, gradually decays over time. Furthermore, these results are robust at both provincial and city scales, with two different programs having similar findings. The retained effects of geographical distance on the cost of information attention and reception helps explain our results. In other words, the law of geographical distance decay and geographical embeddedness is remaining, even though internet technique enables instant information transition. We therefore argue that the prognosis of "death of distance" or "end of geography" is far from the reality-at least from our empirical analysis, albeit in the internet society.