Social Media in China
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Opportunities & Barriers Social Media in China Mike Yao, PhD Department of Media and Communication City University of Hong Kong
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Mike Yao is an Associate Professor at the City University in Hong Kong, China. This is a shortened version of his one and a half hour talk at the Emerging Media Conference in San Francisco 2012. As Social Scientist Mike has evaluated how the people of China use social media, what platforms they use, and the social interactivity among the vast population of this technologically forward country. China is an exotic market that everyboy wants to get into. In order to get in it requires a much deeper understanding than a lot of international businesses are currently doing. "There's a huge gap in terms of how we understand this big animal and we are going to approach it."To read more about this talk and to access the full one and a half hour video go to http://wappow.com/social-media-in-china
Transcript of Social Media in China
Opportunities & Barriers
Social Media in China
Mike Yao, PhD Department of Media and
Communication City University of Hong Kong
Source: CNNIC, 2010
The Rise of Social Media in China
It is all about the “weibo”! Chinese weibo/microblog
users increased from 63.11 million in 2010 to 195 million by July 2011 (CNNIC, 2011).
40.2% Chinese Internet users and 34.0% Chinese mobile Internet users used weibo/microblogs.
The Great China Expectations The biggest market for e-
commerce and online marketing in the world with 450+ net users
The Increasing spending power with a hunger for consumption
A very active and distinct net generation, being highly educated only-child of the growing upper middle class
The Great Firewall of China
“I call this ‘castrated writing’ — I am a proactive eunuch, I have already castrated myself even before the surgeon raises his scalpel.”
--Murong Xuecun,
Chinese writer
Government’s control and censorship of media, both old and new, is the tightest since the Great Cultural Revolution.
The Chinese government is becoming increasingly sophisticated in adopting different forms and methods for censorship.
All ISPs and Telecommunication companies are state-owned; and all digital information can be centrally accessed and controlled.
There is no specific legal guidelines for what would be considered “sensitive” information. (e.g., User-generated-content on the Internet can be seen as “states secret” if it suits the need of the government.).
Q: What can we do to capture the opportunities and break the barriers?
Breaking the political barriers Understand the difference between the
politically-motivated economic barriers and the economically-motivated political barriers.
Understand the difference between those barriers set by local/regional government and those by the central government.
Perspective-taking
Q: So what do these wonderful stats mean?
A2: It is nothing but a wild
masquerade; the party will be over when the music stops!
A1: We are witnessing a great
social media revolution! Let’s be
Cautiously Optimistic!
