Week 11 : Global social media: China
For this week’s topic, I would be talking about Media in China, what are the roles and how it affects the mindset of the people of China. Ok, to begin, I only got perspective as a tourist in China, but when years passed by and doubts, through Digital Communities tutorials started since day 1, I really have been thinking about it, the transparency, voices, bias and ideology in media, , it really got me thinking about China when I was there. I actually did not realize how fake it got when I was in China 10 years ago compared to the China now visited 2 years ago. So, I don’t have any experiences in rural China or any information about them because from what media/research say, China media shows prosperity in their country rather than being poor and hungry. But to me, in the main tourist provinces, they really cannot talk negatively about their country even if they wanted, the tour bus was probably being watched when the tour guide touched politics slightly and I could see they didn’t go further in about it because there are eyes watching. Yes, they actually proudly say that their tech is superb and always better in 10 years’ time, and for being a copy cat of American tech, as they claim that Americans gave these workers the knowledge how to make the tech and replicate it for the country to use. However, this is all context without research as this is what several tour guides has claimed during the tours I’ve been to.
I don’t really have a lot of China or overseas friends, only met one during my Primary school years, as a kid, smartphones weren’t cheap enough for everyone or stable for the public yet, so we do not know the existence Weibo, Taobao, Baidu or WeChat yet. So, he was going back to China at the end of year 6 of our studies, my dad and his dad are really good friends, we wanted to stay in touch, until… he told me, China doesn’t have Facebook anymore, I was like, then how am I going to contact you? So, he introduced me to their app, QQ, it is like an email, example of emails like Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo. That’s when I then found out China closed their social media from the world, but the world could use their app to communicate to friends from China.
Same like today, when you want to see entertainment content from China, you use TikTok, WeChat and Weibo to look for entertainment from influencers or known as KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders), they are people or organizations with strong social status with good examples like political figures, columnists and social media celebrities. Personally, I do not use any of these, but I do follow a media called South China Morning Post. They do post some believable things and there are unbelievable as well, sadly don’t recall many news that I read online.
App controlling in China is very well heard of, but however, I feel the same when I use other social media apps as well, creating ads just for your preference. China media control on the other hand, it’s not all that simple, their system can censor post the government think its offensive or do not bring good values to the country, almost like imperfection is not an option or simply put it, perfectionist. As the very role of media in China is to instruct and educate the people morally as journalists are expected to promote certain “good” values and habits and discourage the “bad” ones.
In conclusion, a lot of things are hidden by the government either for the good of the public or making things worse, but for China, its not like they have a choice for transparent governing and media, are they good with what they have? I assume majority uses VPN too to access things outside from their own country as well, but so do we use VPN to access other countries webs as well. Due to language they actually don’t really the need for western apps to be left out, they almost got anything out of everything especially entertainment like idols, tv shows, movies, animations and social media platforms. It may affect some who are against the laws, but those unaffected actually goes on like us in our normal lives.
This is the end of the blogs, and I really enjoyed this class a lot where I learnt tremendously about the world and issues we face, it really has opened up our cooped up minds of what we get and believe instead of looking only into one perspective, some things are hard to agree but the class teaches a sense of respecting others’ opinions as others might also have a hard time agreeing with you. I sincerely thanks everyone and Dr. Bertha for having this class despite being it being it on an online class session and covid-19 situation.
List of references
Crampton, T,” Social Media in China: The Same but Different”. Thomas Crampton, viewed 20 November 2020. < http://www.thomascrampton.com/china/social-media-china-business-review/>
Social SEO, 2019, “KOL Influencer Marketing in China: What is WeChat, Weibo, Douyin TikTok, and Little Red Book?”. Social SEO, viewed 20 November 2020 < https://hello-73030.medium.com/kol-influencer-marketing-in-china-what-is-wechat-weibo-douyin-tiktok-and-little-red-book-a178cc534924>
Pinxteren, G, V, 2013 “Foreign Media on China: Beyond Positive and Negative reporting”. Clingendael, viewed 2o November 2020 < https://www.clingendael.org/publication/foreign-media-china-beyond-positive-and-negative-reporting>
He, R, “How does the Chinese government manage social media? The case of Weibo”. Reuters institute, 20 November 2020 < https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/our-research/how-does-chinese-government-manage-social-media-case-weibo>















