The Circle of Culture: A Study of the Communication Characteristics of NetEase Cloud Annual Reports

: In recent years, the attention and recognition of the society for the annual use report of NetEase Cloud Platform have been increasing, and users compete for secondary forwarding in social media, which is becoming more and more popular in the society. This researcher regards the NetEase Cloud platform personal annual usage report as a kind of pop culture product and introduces H. T. Odum's "information cycle" as the theoretical basis and analytical framework. He disassembles and analyzes the NetEase Cloud annual usage report from five aspects: representation, identity, production, consumption, and rules, covering the whole process of cultural operation, including cultural production, meaning construction, user identity and consumption, and cultural regulation. It also explores the characteristics of its dissemination so as to systematically recognize and analyze the formation, dissemination, and popularity of this cultural product.


Introduction
With the rapid development and widespread popularization of the Internet and mobile media devices, new media platforms with various functions have penetrated every aspect of people's daily lives, meeting the needs of people in various aspects such as life, work, leisure, and entertainment.It is due to the technological development and increased participation of various types of new media platforms in the lives of individuals that users' daily usage data is also recorded and collected in detail and comprehensively on various new media platforms.
In this Internet environment, in 2017, NetEase Cloud Music pioneered the launch of the "NetEase Cloud Music Users' Annual Listening Report", based on Internet thinking, a personalized and customized generation of personal annual usage reports for users, which has received good feedback and recognition from many users, and some users have sunburned their personal listening reports on microblogging, WeChat, and other social media platforms, which has further formed a secondary dissemination, making this form of Social attention and participation continue to rise.As an emerging form of content marketing in recent years, the dissemination of personal annual reports on the NetEase Cloud Platform has become more and more of a social pop culture, which is worthy of more in-depth excavation and analysis.
Therefore, this paper considers the personal annual usage report of NetEase Cloud Platform as a popular social cultural product and applies the cultural cycle theory to systematically analyze it.Cultural cycle theory is a systematic theory and framework for analyzing cultural products, including five chains: production, representation, identity, consumption, and rules.With the help of this framework, the personal annual usage report of the new media platform is deeply probed into the characteristics of communication at each stage, and the construction, generation, development, and regulation of social popular culture are analyzed.

Theoretical origins
In 1997, scholars such as Stuart Hall formally put forward the concept of the "cycle of culture" in their book Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman.According to Hall and other scholars, the five cultural processes of representation, identity, production, consumption, and rules together form a cycle, that is, the cycle of culture in the Figure 1.The five chains in the cycle are not sequential; each chain is connected to and reproduced in the next chain, i.e., each chain is one of the elements of the next chain, and meaning is continuously developed in the cultural cycle.Although the chains in the real world are constantly overlapping and intertwining with each other in a complex and contingent way, However, scholars such as Paul, in order to conduct a cultural study of a particular object, the Walkman, view the five chains as combined elements in order to better visualize the interactions of the different processes of joining this cultural artifact [1].In Hall's other book, Culture: A Sociological Perspective, Hall elaborates in more detail on the theoretical significance of the "cultural cycle" and its relationship with social life: "The more people think of materiality and culture as two intertwined processes, the more the trajectory of culture is followed, and the more the cultural cycle paradigm enables production, socialization, and socialization to take place in an integrated way, and the more the cultural cycle is realized.The circular paradigm theorizes the relationship between production, society, and the market", and the ways in which culture develops and is mediated are constantly being upgraded in line with the changing times [2].In the theory of "cultural circulation", Stuart Hall especially emphasizes the importance of "representation".In his book Cultural Representation and Referential Practice, Hall points out that "representation is a necessary part of the process of meaning production and exchange among the members of a culture, and it does include the use of language, notation, and images that represent and represent things" [3].According to Hall, "representation" is the production of meaning through language, and there are two systems of "representation": the individual's representation of the world by giving meaning to it, forming a system of representation of objects and human consciousness; and the representation of the world by means of "language" (symbols), in the semiotic sense of the word.The individual, by giving meaning to the world, forms a system of representations of objects and human consciousness; and by means of "language" (symbols), in the semiotic sense, constructs a system of cultural meanings so as to achieve the exchange of meanings within and among cultures, a process that is also known as the "representation" of meanings.The concept of representation has a double meaning, namely, cultural representation and the practice of meaning; the basic means of cultural representation is language, and the way to represent something is to make it meaningful.
Hall also compares three different approaches to representation: the reflective approach, the imaginative approach, and the constitutivist approach.According to Hall, while the reflective approach emphasizes that things themselves determine meaning, and the imaginative approach argues that it is the human subject who gives meaning to things, in the third constitutive approach, the meaning of things is determined neither by the object nor by the subject, but rather "constituted by the system of representation", i.e., by the subject's interrelationships with the outer world The constitutive approach is the more fundamental and important way of [4].There are two main ways of expressing constitutivism: one is at the level of linguistics and semiotics, which reveals how the language (symbol) system constitutes meaning through the analysis of the totality and co-temporality of the language (symbol) and, at the same time, points out that the language (symbol) is social and that its significance constitutes the essence of the "myths", which means that it is simplified, distorted, and naturalized, and that it is the most important way of the "myths".Distorted, naturalized meaning.The other is Foucault's constitutive approach through the revelation of the relationship between discourse, knowledge, and power.Starting from "discourse" and history, Foucault shifted from the relationship of meaning in language to the relationship of power in discourse, pointing out that there is an intricate relationship between discourse, knowledge, and power and that it is this relationship that constitutes the system of meaning.Hall's theory of cultural representation emphasizes the mobility of cultural practitioners and provides a more concrete and reasonable way to explain the production of meaning through language.

Theoretical characteristics
Hall's theory of the "cycle of culture" is based on the solid intellectual tradition of the Birmingham School, which presupposes that culture is a "complete way of life" and "the production and dissemination of meaning".This theory is based on the premise that culture is "a complete way of life" and "the production and dissemination of meaning", which shows that the "materialist view of culture" has had a profound theoretical influence on Hall.This theory is similar to Hall's previous theory of "encoding and decoding".According to Bai Ju (2013), "encoding and decoding treat information dissemination as the study of the production process, insisting on the independence and dissimilarity of each chain, which provides a precedent for the study of the production process of culture, but the encoding and decoding model has not yet been able to realize the concept of "production and dissemination of meaning".However, the encoding/decoding model has not yet been able to fundamentally break away from the linear model of production and circulation, whereas the theory of cultural circulation more clearly emphasizes the internal relationship of "complex structure", which solves the problem of the Birmingham School's inability to successfully connect the symbolic and material attributes of "culture".It resolves the Birmingham School's long-standing inability to successfully join the symbolic and material attributes of "culture" [5].
The theory is also influenced by the theory of the "economic cycle" put forward by Marx in his Critique of Political Economy: Introduction.According to Marx in the Introduction, capitalist production consists of four chains: production, distribution, consumption, and circulation.According to Marx, these four chains are in dialectical unity with each other, and "production" determines the other three elements.However, scholar Guo Benhua (2018) points out that Marx's theory of the "economic cycle" is essentially a single, fixed cyclic model, and "production" is a fixed beginning in it [4]".On the other hand, the "cycle of culture" makes a breakthrough on the basis of this theory, which consists of five structured chains, and the five chains are closely chained to each other.
At the same time, Hall was also influenced by British cultural scholar Johnson's "cultural cycle" theory.Johnson's "cultural cycle" theory connects the linear chain of the classical model of "production, distribution, and consumption" into a ring and constructs a cultural cycle of production, text, reading, and living culture in four chains of social meaning [6].Johnson's cultural cycle theory focuses on the subjectivity of culture and its social meaning construction, i.e., the meaning cycle of social and cultural subjectivity.Hall's cultural cycle theory emphasizes the capital cycle of the objectivity of cultural products and pushes forward the sequential transmission relationship of the stages in Johnson's cultural cycle theory, proposing that all stages of the cultural cycle interact with and influence each other [7].Hall's "cultural cycle" theory is not a simple, unidirectional cycle; it emphasizes the role of mutual influence between the elements in the process of the cycle, that is, process, practice, and reciprocity [4].
Although the "cultural cycle" system is an indivisible whole, if you want to clarify the whole cycle of the system and the relationship between the chains, it is necessary to mechanically divide its physical nature after discussing it, and then two by two combine it in order to achieve the purpose of the complexity of the threads of the smooth comb.Based on this, Luan Kaiyin (2017) specifically analyzes the relationship between the five chains: representation is located in the "leadership and dominance" position, "identity" and "production" itself is the "representation".Representation"; both "consumption" and "representation" can be regarded as chains in the transmission of meaning; the meaning "represented" by the new cultural production is the "representation" of the new cultural production; and the meaning "represented" by the new cultural production is the "representation" of the new cultural production.Meanings "characterized" by new cultural production challenge traditional "rules"; the "identity" of the designer determines the "production", and some innovative "production" is also a "production".The "identity" of the designer determines the "production", and some innovative "production" in turn leads to "identity" "Identity" directly determines the occurrence of "consumption", and "consumption" is also the result of the "production" of the designer."Consumption is also the most direct manifestation of identity; consumption and production are interdependent, and the meaning of a product needs to be realized in a dialog between production and consumption.Consumption" and "production" are interdependent, and the meaning of products needs to be realized in the process of dialogue between production and consumption; "rules" are identified as the solidification of "identity", and the two move forward in an environment of mutual game; "production" and "consumption" are the two most direct manifestations of "identity"."Consumption" is carried out in accordance with the "rules" of life of different classes, and the characteristics of production and consumption of different classes will also bring new social characteristics and differences [8].Sun Yidan (2021) and other scholars have sorted out the meanings of each of the five chains in the theory of "the cycle of culture", and they believe that "representation" is the linguistic expression constituted by a combination of symbols such as pictures, words, and technology; "identity" is the embodiment of "representation", and "identity" is the expression of the "rules of life" of different classes."Identity" is the form in which "representation" works; behind "production" and "consumption" is not only the circulation of products but also the circulation of culture; The "rules" emphasize the impact on society as a whole [9].Hall defines the "way" in which the elements of a cultural cycle are connected as "joining", i.e., the practice of associating two or more elements that are different in order to construct identity.Splice theory is a way of understanding how ideological elements are connected within a discourse under certain conditions.As a systematic cycle, each element joins with the others in contingent and complex ways, and meaning is constantly produced through the continuous joining [10].The five chains are not prioritized or sequential, but they are essential and inseparable.
From the overall research situation at home and abroad, the research on the theory of the cycle of culture is relatively systematic and in-depth, and the background and origin of the theory, the value and significance of the theory, and the field and extension of the application of the theory have all been analyzed and discussed in a more profound manner.In these multi-disciplinary and multi-angle researches, the theory of "the cycle of culture", as a complete cultural research method and an important theoretical system, constitutes culture as a whole, gets rid of the shortcomings of the past, which emphasized too much on the analysis of text and audience and neglected the economic and material aspects, and helps to interpret cultural products and cultural phenomena in all aspects.It helps to interpret cultural products and cultural phenomena in all aspects [10].
However, in contrast, there have been fewer studies on "annual personal use reports of new media platforms" as a popular form of communication in recent years.Most of the existing literature focuses on a specific new media platform or analyzes the strategy or psychology of one of the platforms and its users.However, there is a lack of systematic and comprehensive research on the annual personal usage reports launched by new media platforms as cultural products from the perspective of cultural studies.As a pioneering theoretical model, the theory of the "cycle of culture" has influenced the entire paradigm of cultural research, and it is an effective way of analyzing the complexity and diversity of social practices, which is of great research value.Considering the annual personal usage report of the new media platform as a kind of social popular culture product and introducing the theory of cultural cycle for systematic analysis and in-depth investigation of its dissemination and popularity, it is conducive to providing ideas and inspirations for the operation and marketing activities of the new media and providing better insights into the construction, generation, development, and regulation of social popular culture so as to explore its deeper significance.

Why choose the annual report?
The annual report refers to the financial report and other related documents of a company for the whole fiscal year.Unlike the general annual report, the personal annual usage report is based on the user-oriented concept, relying on the support of big data and algorithmic technology to generate a personalized and customized annual usage report for each user.The launch of this new form can better help users understand the media use in a year.In recent years, with the development of big data, many social media began to use the "annual report" way to count the user's use of the platform over the past year, using the platform as a carrier, supported by data, to help the user recall at the same time, touching the user's emotional memory points, thus deepening the emotional bond between the user and the social media [11].
As a media product in the era of new media on the Internet, the annual report conforms to the meaning of the concept of "culture", possesses the five stages of formation in the process of the cultural cycle, and the five stages can be connected so that it can be regarded as a kind of "culture".It can be regarded as a kind of "culture" and its communication characteristics can be discussed under the theoretical framework of the culture cycle.The theory of the cultural cycle consists of five stages, namely, representation, recognition, production, consumption, and rules, and through a rational ordering and chaining of the stages, it is possible to systematically analyze the factors that contribute to the popularity of this form and its popularity in society.

Why choose NetEase Cloud Platform?
Compared to other platforms, the NetEase Cloud platform was the first to study annual usage reports, and with its large user base, it has a wealth of researchable data.The launch of the year-end report by NetEase Cloud Music began in 2016 when NetEase Cloud uniquely launched an exclusive music calendar, which quickly ignited the network.Since then, NetEase Cloud Music has launched this feature every year at the end of the year or the beginning of the new year.And in 2018, the NetEase Cloud platform integrated the function of dating into the report, at the end of the report, you can use the time of a song to chat in real-time with a person who is most similar to your listening taste.In the annual report 2019, the NetEase Cloud platform has even taken personalization to another level, and the user can customize the image of the 3D villain of his choice.It can be said that NetEase Cloud Platform has always been at the forefront of platform innovation annual usage reports.
Meanwhile, as one of the largest music platforms in China, NetEase Cloud Music has a huge number of users.According to the different music tastes and listening habits of each person, as well as the different time and space and social environments in which each person lives, the NetEase Cloud platform can create diversified scenarios with the basic support of data, and refine and summarize the user's personality and other characteristics based on the usage data, which makes the report content more comprehensive and rich.Especially in recent years, along with the social sharing of users, the annual report of NetEase Cloud has formed a viral spread, expanding the exposure of the platform while cultivating user stickiness, which is of great research value.

Research Method: In-depth Interview Method
The main method used in this study is the in-depth interview method.The unstructured interview method of in-depth interview is flexible and elastic, the interview is more in-depth and detailed, which helps to construct theories, and gives full play to the initiative and creativity of the interviewing parties through real interaction.Through interviews, not only can we obtain a variety of factual issues from the interviewee, but also understand the real emotions, subjective motives and value tendencies of the interviewee through the interviewer's observation (in Table 1), to dig into their deepest feelings [12].3 years 18 university student Through Internet recruitment as well as snowballing, this study recruited 10 in-depth users who pay attention to NetEase Cloud's annual reports for interviews (coded S1-S10 below), with a total interview duration of 517 minutes, and each interview lasting an average of 51 minutes.All interviewees paid more in-depth attention to the NetEase Cloud annual usage report in their daily lives for a longer period (ranging from 3-5 years), which is more representative.And all in-depth interviews were conducted through face-to-face interviews or telephone chats, and the whole process was recorded with the consent of the interviewees.After the interviews, the author transformed the interview recordings into verbatim scripts and analyzed the data.By examining the lives of the indepth users, we gained a deeper understanding of their perceptions of Netflix's annual report.

"Production" and "characterization" of the NetEase Cloud Platform annual report
The results of the interviews indicate that the production of the annual personal use report of the NetEase cloud platform involves encoding the representation of this cultural product, and through the design and planning of the form and content, it constitutes a creative, emotional and other linguistic expression, through which the deeper cognition is conveyed to strengthen the resonance and connection.Therefore, in the specific analysis, production and representation are closely chained and affect each other, and can be chained together as a unity for the overall discussion.

Data presentation: Individual usage behavior associated with keywords and scenarios
The "data" associated with and presenting the user's usage behavior has become a key element of the personal annual report of the NetEase Cloud Platform.The presentation of data makes the description and summary of users' usage behavior more credible.Moreover, these data are generated by users' daily media operation and browsing, so integrated data of a certain scale and classification can effectively represent and correlate users' usage behavior.Moreover, such usage behavior is highly personalized and can accurately meet the needs of each user.
In addition, NetEase Cloud Platform also utilizes the form of H5 to present data.H5 is a kind of page that is mainly displayed and spread in the mobile terminal.Its pages include text, pictures, music, video, etc., which can be used as advertising and marketing, game experience, friend circle sharing, etc.Its biggest feature is that it has low development cost and short production cycle, while it can realize information dissemination at high speed and low price, and its flexibility is very high [13].Netease cloud platform along the time clues vertical expansion, through the statistics of some key nodes, music as a carrier to record the user's story in different time and space, such H5 interaction in the process of creating a sense of story, but also stretches the user's real sense of recollection, reinforcing the bond between the user and the platform.
In the interview, user S7 said, "I was impressed by the annual listening report of 2020 on the NetEase Cloud platform, which made a skillful fusion of music with periods, seasons, and locations, I can know that I love to listen to this song at the original night time and that I love to listen to that song at the original summer time, and I feel that my relationship with NetEase Cloud has become even more intimate."Social media to find the user's sensitive point and expand publicity, often choose to set some keywords as special nodes to help users string together memories about the media, these keywords often have a certain degree of time, memory, and irreplaceable.These keywords often have a certain time memory and irreplaceability [11].Thus, through the support of big data, keywords, as a kind of association mark, can strengthen the chain between the two while cultivating the user's stickiness.As S6 said, "I feel that NetEase Cloud Music understands me so well, it understands what I want to know too well."It can be seen that this kind of keyword not only meets the needs of users but also deepens the memory of the media brand and expands the publicity.

Emotional involvement: data interpreted with warmth and shared with encouragement
If "data" is the basic resource and main content of the new media platform's annual personal usage report, the addition of the "emotion" element undoubtedly makes the cold data a touching warmth.Only by enhancing users' emotional involvement can we better enhance their adhesion to the platform.In this regard, S9 is deeply touched: "We users choose and use a media platform, generally because the platform meets our needs in a certain aspect, and once this need disappears or there is a better media, we are likely to give up or reduce the use of the original platform.In this regard, NetEase Cloud Platform has done exceptionally well, their home reports usually add some explanations with feelings in front of and behind the data, and their themes are also very warm, such as that one of "Meet Yourself in Time", which I find very warm instead of cold."Data are rational, they simply convey information, while a warm analysis of data can make users feel respect, care and praise, which is an important reflection of the emotional value of the personal annual report of the NetEase Cloud Platform.
In addition, the NetEase cloud platform also encourages users to share their annual usage reports.In the production chain of personal annual usage reports of new media platforms, it is necessary to focus on building the dissemination capacity of media products, and the way to realize the high dissemination fervor of cultural products is to induce and incentivize users to share and secondary dissemination on multiple platforms.User S3 said, "The purpose of that NetEase Cloud annual usage report is to share it every time I go to see it.I can share the chain to the report with my group of friends, and they can see my report by clicking on the chain.In addition to the chain, you can also generate images, which is much more intuitive, I kinda like it."User S5, on the other hand, said, "I don't have much contact with my close friends after graduation, but every time I can establish a connection with the help of this chain to the annual report of Netflix, it's convenient to share it."According to the formulation of the Interaction Ritual Chain Theory, long-term feedback occurs when the outcome of one interaction ritual feeds back into the operating conditions that can influence subsequent interaction rituals [14].In other words, after users have experienced and participated in the dissemination and sharing of the annual report as an interactive ritual because they feel the power of the group, they are more driven by the emotional factors in the annual report, so the willingness to participate in the ritual again is enhanced, which also makes the NetEase cloud platform personal annual use report produce more and more extensive and deep social impact under the reinforcement of the dissemination and popularity of the annual report year after year.

Characterization chain
Cultural loop theory and Hall's theory of encoding and decoding are in the same vein, the new media platform personal annual use report as a media cultural product, its meaning construction is through the symbolic coding, condensed into a "language" to communicate with the user and convey the meaning, which mainly includes the visual language and auditory language.

Visual language: anthropomorphic images
Most new media platforms have a user avatar in their annual user report, which "travels" in the report instead of the user.This user virtual image is either fixed, such as the platform's representative cartoon image or can be generated by the user's design [11].The first step in the generation of NetEase Cloud's annual listening report is for users to set up their images by selecting the character singles given by the platform, and this "face pinching" process can express users' preferences to a large extent, attracting users' attention while also making it easy for users to generate a strong sense of immersion, which not only increases recognition of the content of the report but also increases their recognition of the content of the second report.Not only can it add recognition to the content of the next report, but it can also express itself in the process of secondary sharing.In this regard, user S1 is very touching: "I especially like the cartoon pinch face image of NetEase Cloud, and other platforms that directly generate the anime image is different, this DIY generation of the image of the steps so that I can express myself more, for example, I have pink hair in real life, then I can choose the image of the character with pink hair, which makes me feel that I can express myself exclusively more.myself I guess." User S8, a transgender person, introduced a story of bonding with others because of his anthropomorphic image: "I would add an earring to my cartoon image, which is kind of an unspoken sign of our group, and as a result, when I shared it on social platforms, there were netizens who understood the significance of this earring for me, and we also cheered each other up on the platforms, which was a very marvelous experience."Netease cloud annual listening report for social sharing of the user image settings is exactly such a symbolization and interpretation of the symbolization of Guo Chen, through the setting of the image to generate symbols, and out of social or self-presentation needs to communicate it to a third party, by the third party to interpret the symbols, and ultimately complete the dissemination.

Auditory language: personalized symbols
The auditory-linguistic coding aspect is mainly reflected in the background music and sound effects.Sound is also a symbol, and different background music types and styles convey different messages.The annual report records the use and life of users, focusing on emotional appeal, so in the tone of the background music, a soothing and soft style is also used to emphasize the atmosphere and convey and render emotions.At the same time, there are also relatively lively changes in the presentation of some achievements or interesting content.User S10 said, "Maybe it's because I'm an audiophile anchor, I usually pay special attention to sound effects, and I found that there are a lot of details in the sound effects of the annual report of the NetEase Cloud Platform, especially in the scene transition, you can hear some sounds such as opening doors, spinning records, and speeding down, which will make it clearer in my mind that the next scene is going to be a change of scene."This coding of auditory language enhances the sense of scene immersion and improves the realism of the experience.Through the dual coding of visual language and auditory language, the Netflix Personal Annual Usage Report completes the construction of its meaning.

"Recognition" and "Consumption" in the NetEase Cloud Platform Annual Report
Netease cloud platform personal annual use report of identity and consumption is also closely chained, identity is the premise of consumption, and consumption further promotes identity, the two complement each other, and the same can be integrated into research.

Recognition chain: recognition with self-identity and with the group
The purpose of production and characterization is to make us recognize the products and their constructed meanings and to promote consumption, while recognition and consumption are also important chains in the construction of meaning.Users' recognition requires decoding the symbols of media products and understanding their contents and representations.Only when there is a common meaning space between producers and consumers, or between new media platforms that produce media products and users who receive media products, can users identify with media products on multiple levels and lay the foundation for subsequent consumption?User S10's understanding of NetEase Cloud's annual report is as follows: "I think there are times when NetEase Cloud can make me feel less lonely because I find people similar to me here.For example, in the annual report, there is an item that reads 'Ta's listening tastes are similar to yours', so I would click on that person's homepage, and suddenly I realized that we have a lot of bands in common, even though those bands aren't particularly popular, there are people who like them as much as I do, and you know how it feels, I want to cry."User S4 also indicates, "Whenever I see that someone in the group has an annual report with an artist I also really like, I feel like we're family."Under the guidance of a specific module in the NetEase Cloud Report, users place themselves in a specific group, where people in the group have similar media use behaviors, similar interests, similar habits, and similar personalities ...... Based on the recognition of the meaning and logic of their perceptions and behaviors, users place themselves in a group and through the interaction and communication among members, compare themselves with others to increase their cognitive ability to society, to others, and to themselves, and the confirmation of the same traits after comparison makes users further deepen their recognition with their self-identity and the group.As scholars such as Liu Linlin and other scholars have said, the high degree of mutual attention and emotional connection between individuals in interactive rituals can evoke a sense of identity and channel emotional energy for participants, making them motivated and active in defending collective symbols [15].

The consumption chain: the significance of reproduction facilitated by consumption and secondary consumption
"Consumption" is the next step after the production of a media text is interpreted and recognized by the audience.Unlike the mass communication era, in which traditional media such as newspapers, radio and television were the carriers of information dissemination, communication in the new media era is no longer a one-way mode from producer to audience, but a new mode of two-way interaction between producer and audience.Based on this, it becomes possible for the audience to participate in the production in the process of consumption, and even, the consumption of the audience further promotes the reproduction of meaning.This production and consumption are interchained, with production leading to consumption and consumption promoting the reproduction of product content.
NetEase cloud platform personal annual use report after being produced, every year is put on the market, at this time the circulation channel is not have the same content, but has not been filled with the user's personalized data content of the "algorithm template".When the user is authorized to open and generate a complete report with the user's personal usage data, the initial consumption is completed.At the same time, the user's consumption of the annual report is not entirely passive.On the contrary, the process is subjective, and the user can independently choose to accept the consumption or refuse to consume.It can be seen that users can either accept and agree with the meaning given to the product by the producer, or reject and oppose its output meaning, and independently carry out the revision and re-creation of meaning [16].
In addition, users can independently produce new meanings based on the original media products through interactive forms such as secondary dissemination.User S2 said, "The annual report of NetEase Cloud Music in 2021 is very interesting, and one of the data in the report of that year is 'the age of the music soul', I was only 19 years old at that time, but it may be because the songs I often listen to are more retro, and the music soul shown is more than a hundred years old, and I have then forwarded it to my circle of friends and flirted with it, sort of expressing to everyone that I have an attitude about my listening taste."It is because this new meaningful content is the user based on the user group perspective embodied preferences, so it often attracts more users to disseminate and interact, thus optimizing the identity of the user group, greatly enhancing the consumption of media and cultural products.

The "Rules" of the NetEase Cloud Platform Annual Report
"Rules" is an important part of Stuart Hall's theory of cultural cycle, and also an important influencing factor throughout the whole cycle.Analyzing the many problems in the popularity of personal annual reports and how to gradually establish corresponding rules to ensure the orderly and reasonable development of this form is of great significance to the research and grasp of cultural products in the new media era.

Derivative issues in interoperable communication
Social culture in the process of the formation of popular trends, accompanied by the influence and change of more and more people's cognition and behavior, and then impact on the existing rules, manifested in a series of problems and contradictions highlighted [15].In this interview, several interviewees talked about the problems in the annual usage report of the NetEase cloud platform.
Respondent S6 talked about, "The most breathless thing is that one year the most listened-to music in my user's annual report was the University English Listening Course, which was only played because I was going to take the listening test for the Grade 4 or 6 exam at the time, but I didn't want it to be in my annual report, especially when I hadn't passed Grade 4 or 6 yet, and I just felt ashamed to share that."It can be seen that the analysis of monolithic frequency quantities sometimes does not fully and truly reflect the user's behavioral preference bias because the data of some special cases can cause interference and make the data and analysis results misaligned.
Respondent S8, on the other hand, talked about, "I think the content of the annual report that helps with recall is not necessarily good memories or memories I want to remember, for example, the songs in the report at that time made me remember the pain of my lost love, and I instantly liked Netflix."It can be seen that when the user behavior recorded in the data is too comprehensive and detailed, a certain aspect of the data presented may be associated with a failure or despondent experience that the user does not want to remember, which is likely to trigger the migration of negative emotions, affecting their evaluation and use of the report as a form itself.
And interviewee S1 talked about another problem, she thinks that the NetEase Cloud platform defines the classification vaguely and easily leads to misalignment of perception, "There is a page in the NetEase Cloud Music Listening Report that users have listened to the most niche songs, but what is the definition and division standard of 'niche'?'Niche' versus 'mass' is a relatively subjective perception, sometimes I feel that the songs I listen to are quite popular, and as a result, they are shown as 'niche' in the annual report, I think this can't be defined by simply the number of plays or the number of comments."How to correctly deal with the relationship between "personalization" and "popularization", and how to expand the extension of "recognition", which also requires platforms to further improve the relevant "rules".

Proposals to standardize annual reporting rules
Netease cloud platform personal annual use report from the emergence of the process of the popularity of several problems, and these problems and contradictions are to promote the formation of new rules and norms of the premise and foundation.After understanding the rule problems, it is necessary to better regulate the rules, mainly from the legal law and industry self-regulation.
In terms of laws and regulations, the state can introduce relevant laws to protect users' data rights and interests.For example, on April 4, 2023, China introduced and enforced the Personal Information Protection Law, which requires new media platforms to safeguard the informed consent of users when using their usage data and personal information to carry out a variety of production, marketing, and other activities, and clarifies the boundaries of access to and restrictions on the use of user data.
As for industry self-regulation, the Internet industry attaches great importance to platform regulation, and specific management mechanisms within the industry can regulate the benign development of the industry using criticizing, informing and evaluating the industry [17].Through laws and regulations and industry self-regulation, thus forming external explicit and implicit double constraints on the construction and building of the annual report of NetEase Cloud Platform, avoiding and solving possible problems and contradictions, and promoting the good development of the annual report of NetEase Cloud Platform.

Dissemination Characteristics of NetEase's Annual Report
NetEase cloud platform personal annual use report is a new and rapidly popular media culture product in recent years, it represents and reflects not only the new media platform communication concept, media form and marketing means of transformation and upgrading, but also the macro level of shaping the new social and cultural trends, is the use of big data and algorithms and technology means and to meet the user's diversified psychological and emotional needs of the innovative carrier.The annual report of the NetEase Cloud Platform contains the code of its becoming a social pop culture.
To analyze the "code" for the popularity of NetEase's annual report, this paper starts from the theory of the cultural cycle and focuses on the five chains of production, representation, identity, consumption and rules in its communication.Among them, the two chains of "production" and "characterization" are based on the perspective of producers of media cultural products, while the two chains of "recognition" and "characterization" focus on the user side.The two chains of "production" and "characterization" are based on the perspective of producers of media cultural products, the two chains of "recognition" and "representation" are focused on the perspective of users, and the chain of "rules" is constructed by both parties.Through the communication practices of both parties in the five chains, as well as the mutual influences, joints, and cyclic characteristics of each chain, the communication characteristics of the NetEase Cloud Platform's annual report as a popular cultural product are demonstrated in-depth.
From the point of view of the production side, the communication characteristics of NetEase Cloud Platform's annual usage report are reflected in the two chains of "production" and "characterization", where NetEase Cloud Platform associates individual usage behaviors with keywords and scenarios, warmly interprets the data and encourages users to share, thus making the annual report an interactive ceremony between users and the platform.This makes the annual report an interactive ceremony between users and users, and between users and the platform.On top of production, the annual report, as a media product, achieves a good representation effect through anthropomorphic visual language and personalized auditory language coding.It can be said that the two chains of "production" and "representation" set the concept, style and form of the media product, lay the foundation of the communication characteristics of the annual report, and vividly reflect the personalization and interactivity of communication.
From the perspective of users, the dissemination characteristics of the NetEase cloud platform's annual usage report are reflected in the two chains of "identity" and "consumption", where users receive the annual report based on their self-identity, which naturally coalesces and contributes to the group and continuously strengthens the group identity, and the group, in turn, feeds back the users' identity and usage.The user receives the annual report based on his/her self-identity, the identity naturally coalesces and contributes to the group and continuously strengthens the identity of the group, and the group in turn feeds the user's identity and use.Users' consumption of personal annual reports is a reproduction that combines independent adaptation and creation with secondary sharing.Users' continuously reinforced identity and productive consumption add momentum and heat to the dissemination and popularity of personal annual reports on the NetEase Cloud Platform, vividly reflecting the social and productive nature of communication.
The production side and the user side have jointly constructed the "rules" of the annual personal use report on the new media platform in the practice of the four chains of production, characterization, recognition and consumption.The process of forming the rules is accompanied by some problems that arise in the process of annual report dissemination, and to better solve these problems, the constraints of laws, regulations and industry self-regulation are needed to make the dissemination of the annual usage report more orderly and systematic and to make the operation of this media product and the trend of popular culture in society more stable, which is a vivid manifestation of the consensus nature of dissemination.

Research Reflection
Of course, there are still some shortcomings in this study, which still need to be further improved by the author.
First, in terms of research methodology, although this study combines the method of in-depth interviews, due to the limited time, the interview data is rather thin.It is hoped that in future research, relevant data can be improved, relevant experience can be accumulated, and more in-depth research can be made.In addition, this study may be combined with quantitative research methods to gain a more intuitive understanding of the annual communication characteristics of the NetEase Cloud Platform as a whole.
Second, in terms of research objects, due to limited energy, this study only focuses on studying the platform NetEase Cloud, but in addition to the NetEase Cloud platform, in recent years, Alipay, Meituan, QQ Music and other platforms have launched their annual reports one after another, but this study does not include the data of these platforms in the scope of the study, and the type of samples needs to be expanded.

Conclusions
In short, the NetEase cloud platform personal annual trial report in the five chains of the cultural cycle presents a rich variety of communication characteristics, each chain interacts and influences, the first and the last are connected, and the formation of the rules will guide a new round of production and representation, identity and consumption, and once again improve the rules, and the cycle of reinforcing the vitality and popularity of the new media platform personal annual use report as a media product and social culture.
Of course, a well-functioning cultural cycle is only a relatively ideal state for the creation, development, evolution and optimization of culture.Just like the popularity and silence of the Walkman culture, which Hall first analyzed by using the theory of cultural cycle, with the influence and change of science and technology, economy, politics and other environments on the media environment and the audience's concepts, the conditions and basis of the cultural cycle will also change, and a certain kind of cultural product will not stay in the cycle forever with vitality and heat, and a new form of media will always open up a new round of cultural cycle to give birth to a new popular culture and product.New forms of media will always start a new round of cultural cycles and give birth to new social popular culture and products.However, by summarizing and analyzing the communication characteristics of the annual personal use reports of NetEase Cloud Platform under the framework of the cultural cycle theory, it helps to grasp the development trend of social popular culture, provides ideas and guidelines for the operation and marketing activities of new media, and inspires new media platforms to explore and launch more personalized, valuable and popular user

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Hall's model of "The Circle of Culture"

Table 1 :
Basic information about the respondents