A Brief Look at Social Media in China
I have to admit, prior to the introduction of this module, I knew very little about the social media landscape in countries outside the western world. China in particular, which is obscene- considering it has the worldâs largest Internet base of approximately 513 million people.
 Not only does China have the worldâs largest Internet base, but not surprisingly the worldâs most active social media ecology. More than 300 million people use it, which is roughly the combined population of France, Germany, Spain and he United States.
 However, unlike countries like France, Germany, the US, UK and Australia, platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube do not exist in China. This is due to the implementation of Internet censorship by the Peopleâs Republic of China (PRC). There are more than 60 Internet regulations that have been implemented by state-owned companies and organisations, which block not only website content, but track the access of individuals. American platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were blocked by the PRC in 2009. According to Amnesty International, China âhas the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents in the worldâ (Global Internet Freedom Consortium, 2005).
 Despite all this, China has an array of exuberant, home-grown social media platforms whose affordances, which were/are often more, advanced than in the West. Chinese users to embed multimedia content in social media more than 18 months before Twitter users could in the US for example.
 What I find to be most fascinating though, is what these exuberant, home-grown social media platforms are and how these social networking platforms are being used. YouTube, YouKu and Todou, for example. In the West, visual-imaging social networking platform âYouTubeâ is predominately used to post and share short videos of cute animals or domestic bloopers. Chinese platforms YouKu and Todou however, are filled with professionally produced programs, which often replace the American equivalent of television stations. Because the only real media that the Chinese had access to prior to social media was pre-filtered and state-run, social media in China offers an alternative news source filled with user recommendations/ opinions etc. that the public is less sceptical of.











