Users' Status Under The Background Of Search Engines' Commodification

The Internet technology enriched the social information,but also brought information overload and information anxiety. To solve this problem, search engines have been created. Today, search engines have mastered the inportant entrance of the Internet, becoming the new gatekeeper in the information era.They directly or indirectly built knowledge structrue and cognitive system of users, even influence social culture updates.Search time has come.The search engine, as a social organization, has its own survival philosophy and operation mode.It contains mutiple interest relations and becomes biased. All kinds of internal and external contradictions sharpen the conflicts between public and commercial role of search engines, which changes the rights and status of users. Comparing with the high use of search engines,the cognition of their nature and internal power conflicts is very poor. There are many blind spots about search engines which must be illiminate. Also, we must find effective methods to curb vicious expansion of search engine's power, construct harmoious communication relationship, and re-estabilsh the subjective status of users.This paper firstly maps the history of the commodifiction of search engine, which outlines the trajectory of search engine's role change from information fliter to advertising promoter. This lays factual foundation of the study. Through analyzing search engines'connotation, we can will search engines as mass media. This lays theoretic foundation of the study. Then this research analyzs the status of users using the Audience commercialization Theory and Subjuct Audience Theory, which reveals users' rights mount and status flaw from critical perspective. Utilizing the Political Ecomomy of communication Theory, this paper concludes that users have been totally commercialized from individual to groups, from labor to effort of labor under background of search engines' commercialization. Through analyzing the search engines'organization mode, and users'search habits and inherent cognitive, this paper discusses the realization of several users' representative rights, such as the right to know, the right of privacy, the right of option, and reveals the fact that users have lost their right territory and subject position. In the end, this paper discusses the solution for re-establishing the subject position of users from government regulation, search engines' self-discipline, users' self-conscious, which constructs harmonious communication relationship.No longer concerning the commercial value of search engine, this study seizes strategic point of controversy about search engine,and objectively analyzes the new preach suffer relationship of search engine in transmission mode in critical perspective. Looking into the bowels of search engines' organization, the study clarifies the position and effect of users in the search engines' power networks to find a way which re-establish users' rights subject status.