How are Co-creative Labourers Exploited on Chinese Social Media

—A Case Study of Co-creative Labourers on Chinese Weibo and Miaopai Student: Ge Liu Thesis Supervisor: Else Nygren Master’s Thesis 2016 Department of Informatics and Media, Uppsala University

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Abstract Ever since Web2.0 was valued and popularised in the 2000s, co-creative labourer, the

blurry identity of consumer and producer in the context of creative industries, has

been a hot topic in media studies (Deuze 2007).

Banks and Deuze (2009) define co-creative labourer as consumers “who participate in

the process of making media as co-creators of content (420)”. Since the blurry identity

of producing and consuming indicates the change of value creation in media industries

and further challenges the traditional relationship between media companies and co-

creative labourers (Humphrey and Grayson 2008; Fuchs 2010), when it comes to the

discipline of informational capitalism, how do co-creative labourers and media

companies perceive each other? How do co-creative labourers and labour create value?

To what extent co-creative labourer and labour are associated with exploitation? These

questions have become fascinating for academic studies (Toffler 1980; Tapscott and

Williams 2007; Scholz 2008; Banks and Humphreys 2008; Ritzer and Jurgensson

2010; Fuchs 2010; Arvidsson and Colleoni 2012).

Scholars hold different opinions on the relationships between co-creative labourer, co-

creative labour and exploitation. However, since most theories in informational

capitalism are raised before the rise of short video applications such as Vine and

Snapchat. When it comes to the recent case of co-creative labourers on Miaopai and

Weibo- the China’s biggest short video application and micro-blog, when viewing the

recent project launched by them to encourage their users- the co-creative labourers- to

become more productive, a limit of theoretical elabouration is found, new

perspectives and understandings of co-creative labourers in Chinese short video

industries, especially those on Chinese short video applications are demanded.

Key words: co-creative labour, short video application, exploitation, value creation

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Acknowledgement Firstly, I would like to express my profound gratitude to my parents for giving me

unfailing support through all these years. Without their selfless support, I couldn’t

make it. I would also like to thank Tuantuan for accompanying my parents when I am

not around.

I want to give special thanks to my thesis advisor Else Nygren at the Department of

Informatics and Media at Uppsala University. Without her insightful guidance and

inspiration, I wouldn’t be able to finish this study. Even though writing the thesis has

been a tough process for me due to my languages and self-doubts, with Else's

encouragements, I can always feel motivated when writing thesis.

I would like to thank my flatmates, Zhirong Fu and Pianpian Wu for their selfless

company.

Sincerely, as the life at Uppsala University has been one of the best memories in my

life, I would give special thanks to all the lecturers I've met in Uppsala and the

company of my classmates in the Digital Media and Society class of 2014.

Besides, I would want to thank all my interviewees for sharing their experiences with

me. Without them, I would not be able to conduct and finish my study.

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Table of Contents 1. Introduction……………………………………….………………….……......6

1.1Introduction……………………………………….………………….……...6

1.2 Research Questions……………………………………………….... …….. 8

1.3 Disposition………………………………………….……………….... ……...11 2. Background…………………………………………………………………..12

2.1 A Brief History of Co-creative Labour and Exploitation Studies...……….12

2.2 The Developments of Co-creative Labourers and Online Celebrities in

China………………………………………………………………………15

2.3 Introduction of Miaopai and Weibo in China …………………………….18

2.3.1 Miaopai ................................................................................................18

2.3.2 Weibo…………………………………………………………………19

2.4 Co-creative Labour in A Project of Short Video Production Launched by

Weibo Corporation………………………………………………………..20 3. Previous Research…….…………………………………………………..…23

3.1Co-creation and Co-creative labourer………………………………......…23

3.2 Marxist Theories on Labour and Labourer, Immaterial Labour, and

Value Creation……………………………………………………………25

3.3 Studies and Debates on Exploitation……………………………….…….30

3.4 Creativity, Efficiency and Effectiveness of Product, and Online

Celebrities ..................................................................................................33

3.5 Current Progress and Existing Gaps in the Field………………………....35 4. Theoretical Framework…………….………………………………..……....37

4.1 Fuchs’ Approach on Labour, Labourer and Exploitation………………...37

4.1.1 Unpaid Labour and Labourers are Exploited…………….....……...38

4.1.2 Capital Accumulation on Social Media…………………...…..…...39

4.2 Agency of Co-creative Labourers………………………………………...41

4.3 Efficiency and Effectiveness of Products and Their Relationships with Co-

creative Labourers….…………………………………………………….42

4.3.1 Efficiency of Products and the Labour Efficiency…………………...43

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4.3.2Effectiveness of Products and Four capabilities for Co-creative

Labourers Be Effective Online……..………………………………..44

5. Methodology…………………………………………..………………........46

5.1 Research Design...………………………………………………………46

5.2 Case Study of the Co-creative Labourers on Chinese Weibo and

Miaopai……………………………………………………………….....46

5.2.1 Quantitative Research……..………………………………………..47

5.2.2 Qualitative Research……..…………………………………………49

5.3 Limitations…………………………………………………………........51

5.4 Ethics………………………………………………………………........52 6. Analysis .……………………………………………………………………54

6.1 Information of the Observed Short Video Creators……………………..54

6.2 Interview Data of the Case Study and Content Analysis of Relevant

Reports…………………………………………………………….…….55

6.2.1 How Do Verified Co-creative Labourers on Weibo and Miaopai

Perceive Themselves…………………………………………………55

6.2.2 How Do Media Companies Perceive Co-creative Labourers.………60

6.2.3 How Does Capital Accumulate on Chinese Weibo and Miaopai…...63 7. Conclusion and Further Discussions…………………………………………70

7.1 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………71

7.1.1Co-creative Labours on Chinese Short Video Applications are

Exploited…………………………………………………………………71

7.1.2 Co-creative Labourers are Not Passively Exploited, They Take Initiatives in

the Relationship with Media Companies………………………………………72

7.1.3 Advertising Helps with Profit Growth, However, Audience is the Key to

long-term profit……………………………………………………..………….72

7.1.4 The Rlatioe……………………………………………………………73

7.2 Future Studies ………………………………………………………………74

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References……………………………………………….……………………………75 Appendix………………………………………………………………………… 82

Lists of Tables and Figures Table 1……………………………………………………………………………48 Table 2……………………………………………………………………………49 Figure 1…………………………………………………………………………. 21 Figure 2…………………………………………………………………………..40 Figure 3…………………………………………………………………………. 57 Figure 4…………………………………………………………………………..61 Figure 5…………………………………………………………………………. 62 Figure 6…………………………………………………………………………..66 Figure 7…………………………………………………………………………. 67 Figure 8…………………………………………………….…………………….74

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Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 Introduction

Ever since Web2.0 was valued and popularised in the 2000s, co-creative labourer, the

blurry identity of consumer and producer in the context of creative industries, has

been a hot topic in media studies (Deuze 2007). Banks and Deuze define co-creative

labourer as consumers “who participate in the process of making media as co-creators

of content” (2009, 420). Since the blurred identity of producing and consuming

indicates a change of capital accumulation in media industries, and further challenges

the traditional relationship between media companies and co-creative labourers

(Humphrey and Grayson 2008; Fuchs 2010), when it comes to the discipline of

informational capitalism, how do co-creative labourers and media companies perceive

each other? How do co-creative labourers and labour create value? To what extent are

co-creative labourer and labour associated with exploitation? These questions have

fascinated academics (Toffler 1980; Tapscott and Williams 2007; Scholz 2008; Banks

and Humphreys 2008; Ritzer and Jurgensson 2010; Fuchs 2010; Arvidsson and

Colleoni 2012).

Scholars hold different opinions on the relationship between co-creative labourers, co-

creative labour, and exploitation. Starting from a Marxist point of view, Fuchs (2010)

and Fisher (2012) insist that free work offered by co-creative labour represents a new

way for capitalists to accumulate surplus value, “particularly the production through

communication and sociability” (Fisher 2012, 189). Drawing on Cyber-libertarianism,

Tapscott and Williams (2007, 193) argue that as long as co-creative labour gets

adequate reward, it is too far to say that they are exploited.

Ritzer and Jurgensson (2010, 27) further develop Tapscott and Williams’ (2007)

argument. According to them, since the rise of Web 2.0 brings the centrality of

prosumption, customers and consumers become prosumers. With the rise of prosumer

or rather sat, co-creative labours, a new form of economy without exploitation

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emerges, the effectiveness instead of the efficiency of products and services are

emphasised.

However, since all the theories introduced above, including many other studies on co-

creative labourers and labour such as Zwick, Bonsu and Darmody’s (2008),

Arvidsson and Colleoni’s (2012), were raised before the rise of short video

applications such as Vine and Snapchat. When it comes to the recent case of co-

creative labourers on Miaopai and Weibo, China’s biggest short video application and

micro-blog, when viewing the project launched in March by them to encourage their

users - the co-creative labourers - to become more productive, a limit of theoretical

elabouration is found. New perspectives and understanding of co-creative labourers

on Chinese social media, especially those on Chinese short video applications, are

demanded.

In late 2013, Miaopai, a mobile-based short video making and sharing application,

was released by the Yixia Corporation. Since Yixia Corporation has collabourated

with and invested in Weibo corporation, as soon as Miaopai was launched, it was

embedded in Weibo 4.0 and serves as its official video service. Therefore, not only

are all the videos posted on Weibo automatically uploaded onto Miaopai but also the

views of videos on Weibo count towards Miaopai’s traffic. Thus, in this research, the

co-creative labourers on Miaopai and Weibo refer to the same group of users.

On March 31 2016, Weibo Corporation launched a project to support users who create

short videos on both Miaopai and Weibo. According to the statement Weibo's Project

of Supporting Short Video Creators (微博短视频作者扶持计划第一弹) posted by

Weibo corporation（2016）, by promising to help users increase their followers and

monetise their videos, Weibo encourages users who create videos on both Miaopai

and Weibo to get verified as “short video masters” and create videos regularly. This

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project was welcomed by Miaopai and Weibo users as soon as it was launched.

According to the feedback left under the post, by 10th

May, the project had more than

5,500 likes, 1,450 comments, and 300 applications for verification. By the end of July,

it had more than 1.4 million views. Thus, in this thesis, co-creative labourers on

Miaopai and Weibo are divided into two types: the influential or verified short video

creators, and the ordinary Weibo and Miaopai users. Moreover, since the

announcement of Weibo Corp relates verified short video creators with online

celebrities, in the case study, verified short video creators are interchangeable with

online celebrities.

Since on the one hand, by encouraging co-creative labourers to become verified and

productive, the project reflects Fuchs’ argument that the co-creative labourer is a

dynamic category and the free work offered by co-creative labourers can bring

potential interest or value to media companies (2010; 2013). On the other hand, the

division of co-creative labourers into verified influential labourers and the ordinary

users, may indicate a more complicated relationship between co-creative labourers

and media companies. Based on Fuchs’ approach towards exploitation and co-creative

labourers, by introducing ordinary co-creative labourers’ agency of being influential

which is overlooked in Fuchs’ theory but mentioned by Ritzer and Jurgensson (2010),

by investigating whether the exploitation of ordinary co-creative labourers and the

influential, this research aims to offer insightful understanding into how co-creative

labourers are exploited on the Chinese social media platforms.

1.2 Research Questions

The main research question of this study is “how is co-creative labourer exploited on Chinese social media?” To answer this question, two steps of research will be taken. First, previous research and relevant news reports will be viewed. By introducing

previous studies on co-creative labourers, labour, value creation and exploitation, this

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aims to examine the progress and gaps in the field. Then, by reviewing related news

reports, official data, as well as the reports released by Miaopai and Weibo, this helps

not only to get an overview of the situations of Miaopai and Weibo, but also to gain

deeper insight into how executives of these two social media platforms perceive their

positions.

Second, a case study of co-creative labourers on China’s Miaopai and Weibo will be

conducted. As mentioned above, even though the study is based on Fuchs’ approach

towards co-creative labourers, labour, and exploitation, since both Fuchs’ (2010; 2013)

and Ritzer and Jurgensson’s (2010) theories have limits when explaining the co-

creative labourers on Chinese short video applications, by conducting a case study on

co-creative labourers using Weibo and Miaopai, and analysing the collected data with

related theories, a deeper insight into how co-creative labourers are linked with media

companies and exploitation in Chinese short video production will be provided. Since

Weibo and Miaopai represent two different but dominant types of social media

platforms in China, furthermore, how co-creative labourers are exploited on Chinese

social media will be answered.

Three sub-questions are settled beside the main research question. The first two are

prepared for the case study: (1) how do verified short video creators on Weibo and

Miaopai perceive themselves in media industries; and (2) how do media companies

perceive co-creative labourers on Weibo and Miaopai?

For the first question, since all the verified short video creators joined Weibo’s project

voluntarily, first of all, the motivations for those who applied for verification would

be investigated. Then, by interviewing “short video masters” whether there is any

difference before and after verification, and observing how they behave and interact

with ordinary web users on Chinese Weibo and Miaopai, the relationships between

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verified short video creators with ordinary web users and media companies from “short video masters”’ perspectives will explored. For the second question, by

examining how media companies perceive co-creative labourers, and investigating

why Weibo and Miaopai encourage their co-creative labourers to be productive,

whether media company values differently on different co-creative labourers will be

checked. To answer these two questions, content analysis of interviews and related

news reports will be applied. Moreover, empirical data for example, the growth of

followers, views, comments on posts are also considered to understand the function of

the supporting project and to measure whether being influential brings any differences

to co-creative labourers.

Another question is raised to help answer the main research question: (3) how does

capital accumulate on Chinese short video applications? Since in this research, co-

creative labourers have been divided into two types: the influential and the ordinary,

by examining the different ways co-creative labourers contribute interests to Miaopai

and Weibo, and analyzing relative financial reports, this question aims to get deeper

insight into how co-creative labourers are exploited on Chinese social media

platforms.

Therefore, concerning not only the relationship between different co-creative

labourers and media companies, but also the capital accumulation on Chinese short

video applications, this research is based on Fuchs’ approach towards exploitation and

locates itself in the discourse of informational capitalism and labour research. The aim

of this study is to provide insightful understanding into how co-creative labourers are

exploited on Chinese social media, and and hopefully to enrich Fuchs’ approach

(2010, 2013) from a Chinese perspective. During which, both empirical and

theoretical research methods will be applied.

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1.3 Disposition

The thesis constitutes seven chapters. The first chapter introduces the study as a

whole. In this section, the main and sub-research questions will be explained. The

second chapter provides necessary background information. In this section, first, a

brief history of co-creative labour studies will be provided. Secondly, the

developments of co-creative labourers, short video applications, and Weibo in China

will be introduced. Thirdly, the motivation in choosing co-creative labourers on

Miaopai and Weibo as the case study will be explained.

The third chapter presents how previous studies understand co-creative labourers,

labour, and exploitation. Covering theories from Marxist tradition and cyber-

libertarian theories, in this section, the progress and existing gaps in the field will be

discussed. The fourth chapter introduces the theoretical framework of this research.

As mentioned above, since this study is based on Fuchs’ approach towards

exploitation, however, both Fuchs’ (2010; 2013) and Ritzer and Jurgensson’s (2010)

theories have limits when explaining co-creative labourers in Chinese short video

applications, by accessing both theories and introducing applicable concepts, this

section aims to pave the way for the following case study and the analysis.

The fifth chapter presents the concrete research design, which includes both

quantitative and qualitative methods. At the end of this section, limits and ethics of

this study will also be discussed. The sixth chapter presents the analysis of both the

quantitative and qualitative data collected from the case study. By contextualising the

results with the theories that will be chosen, answers to the research questions can be

offered. Then, when it comes to chapter seven, conclusions that reflect the main and

sub-research questions will be addressed, thoughts on the future study of this topic

will be discussed

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Chapter 2: Background

In this chapter, necessary information about the topic of this study is provided to give

a general idea of the research. The chapter is divided into 4 parts. The first part

presents a brief history of the co-creative labourer and exploitation studies; by

reviewing some concepts and approaches which could be applied in the following

case study, this part introduces the theoretical starting point of the research. The

second part gives a short introduction to the developments of co-creative labourer in

Chinese media industries. Since in this study, co-creative labourers on Chinese social

media platforms are divided into two types: the influential and the ordinary,

moreover, Weibo Corp relates online celebrity closely with its verified short video

creators, relative information about the online celebrities in the China context is

introduced. The third part presents how short video applications develop in China.

Then, in the last part, the inspiration of this research, the project launched by Weibo

Corporation ,which encourages co-creative labourers to become verified and

productive, is introduced.

2.1 A Brief History of Co-creative Labour and Exploitation Studies

Since the subject of this study is the co-creative labourers on Chinese social media, Banks and Deuze’s definition that co-creative labourer as consumer “who participate

in the process of making media as co-creators of content” (2009, 420) is adopted.

Emphasising the participation of co-creative labourers in content production on the

Internet, the term co-creative labourer can be traced back to the ‘prosumer’, as coined

by Toffler (1980) in The Third Wave. According to Toffler, since the market of

standardised production will ultimately be replaced by the production of customised

products (Toffler 1980, 23), the current mass production and standardised

consumption will be replaced by prosumption (Ibid, 24). Thereafter, consumers will

take a more active role in the process of producing, prosumers instead of producers

will become dominant in future production (Ibid).

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Although scholars such as Tapscott (1996) and Terranova (2000) re-addressed the

blurred identity of consumer and producer later in the 1990s, the concept of the

prosumer did not embrace much theoretical elabouration until Web2.0 was valued.

Coined by Darcy DiNucci, ‘Web2.0’ initially refers to a technical breakthrough where the

outward form of the Web will multiply and information receiving will become

fragmented (1999 retrieved by Darcyd 2008). Later, O’Reilly (2005) redefined and

popularised Web2.0 by arguing that in the future, software will be built on the Internet

instead of the desktop. Nowadays, Web2.0 is widely accepted as the move of the

World Wide Web “from personal websites to blogs and blog aggregation, from

publishing to participation, from Web content as the outcome of large up-front

investment to an ongoing and interactive process, and from content management

systems to links based on tagging" (Flew 2008, 19). Therefore, with the developments

in digital technologies, and since the participation of Web users becomes more and

more significant in media content production, theoretical elabourations of the

prosumer begin to grow.

In 2004, Hardt and Negri (2004) depicted the prosumer as the collective and co-

operative immaterial labourers on the Internet. According to them, the prosumer

offers immaterial labour and creates “immaterial products such as knowledge,

information, communication, a relationship, or an emotional response” (Ibid, 108).

Then, Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004) argued that the active participation of

consumers would move on to value creation. According to them, “the meaning of

value and the process of value creation are rapidly shifting from a product and firm-

centric view to personalised consumer experiences” (Ibid, 5). Tapscott and Williams (2007) later introduced the ‘Wikinomic’ model to demonstrate that in Web2.0, businesses encourage consumers to work for free. As the blurred identity of

producing and consuming indicates the change of value creation, it challenges the

traditional relationship between labourer and companies in media industries. When it

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comes to the discipline of informational capitalism and labour research, the

discussions on the prosumer gradually move on to the relationship between prosumers

and media companies, as well as linking between prosumers and exploitation.

Theories about exploitation and the exploited class can be traced back to Marx’s (1867) labour and value theory. According to Marx (1867, 256), since in industrial

capitalism, workers are compelled to work more than necessary to satisfy their

immediate needs, by extracting and appropriating the excess value which is generated

by labour for free, money is able to beget money in capitalism, the capital self-

valorisation is vampire-like towards workers. However, since Marx’s theory was

raised in industrial capitalism, through the years, the developments of digital

technologies has brought people to the age of informational capitalism (Fuchs 2010,

179). New understandings of labour, value, and exploitation have come out, and

debates in the field of labour research has moved on to the creative industries where

co-creative labourers become dominant, and immaterial works become significant

(Tapscott and Williams 2007; Sholz 2008; Humphrey and Grayson 2008; Banks and

Deuze 2009).

Since in this research, Fuchs’ (2008; 2010; 2013) and Ritzer and Jurgensson’s (2010)

approaches are highlighted, introductions of both theories are given as follows.

Starting from a Marxist point of view, Fuchs claims that since in informational

capitalism, unpaid co-creative labourers are “forced to permanently sell their own

labour power per contracts to capitalist corporations that outsource or subcontract

labour power” (Fuchs 2010, 185), the notion of the exploited class should be

expanded to include the unpaid immaterial labourer (Ibid). He further argues that

since many of the self-employed labourers constantly shift from self-employment to

temporary labour, unpaid labour and so on, the identity of co-creative labourers are

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not fixed, and self-employed labour and labourer is a dynamic category (Ibid, 186).

Partlly based on Cyber-libertarianism, Ritzer and Jurgensson (2010) argue that the

emergence of co-creative labour implies a new form of economy. According to them,

since Web2.0 brings presumption and greater centrality, on one hand, capitalists are

unable to control co-creative labourers and need to develop new ways to generate

profit, on the other hand, effectiveness instead of efficiency of products and services

will be emphasised as content produced by co-creative labourers would be abundant

on the Internet. Ritzer and Juegensson also cited Tapscott and Williams’ (2007)

argument; according to them, as long as the co-creative labourers are adequately

rewarded, no matter whether the reward is purely mental, for example, recognition and

satisfaction, it is too far to say that they are exploited (Ritzer and Jurgensson 2010,

27).

2.2 The Developments of Co-creative Labourers and Online Celebrities in China

Co-creative labour became significant in China since the first Chinese blog

BlogChina.com was launched in 2002. Thereafter, Chinese media giants such as Sina

Corporation, Sohu Corporation, and 163.com kept the pace up with BlogChina.com

(Xinhuanet, 2006). Since during the first decade of the 2000s, co-creative labourers

had developed along with blogs in China, when viewing the start-up stage of Chinese

co-creative labourers, three turning points can be addressed (Xinhuanet, 2006). The

first turning point occurred in 2003, when the blog was newly introduced to China.

By the end of 2003, there were 0.2 million bloggers. Since during this period,

grassroots bloggers such as Muzimei (木子美 ) and Moonlightblog (月光博客 )

became popular and famous on the Internet, the term co-creative labourers and online

celebrities were discussed in Chinese media industries from the very beginning.

The second turning point occurred in 2004, when blogs in China were becoming more

and more commercialised. During this period, some individuals and organisations employed by third party companies began to promote themselves by generating

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intellectual properties such as text and video. Moreover, values created by co-creative

labourers, especially by those who were influential, became noticeable on the

Internet. The third turning point occurred in 2005, when more and more ordinary web

users became bloggers. However, even though by the end of 2008, there were 0.1

billion bloggers in China, co-creative labourers on Chinese social media didn’t get

much attention until the microblog was introduced (Sina & Weibo Data Center and

iResearch 2016).

In August 2009, Sina Weibo was launched by the Sina Corporation. Relying on the

large population of Sina Blog, ever since Sina Weibo came out, scholars held

optimistic opinions about it and believed that microblogs would become the next

online public sphere for the Chinese (Li and Liu 2015, 499). In 2011, the daily active

users on Sina Weibo reached 60 million. Moreover, since Sina Weibo had an

identification policy which allowed celebrities and influential co-creative labourers

become verified and more influential, in the age where popularity and traffic means

profit, influential co-creative labourers, as well as their capability to produce effective

products and attract active ordinary co-creative labourers are witnessed by media

companies. Therefore, online celebrity became a buzzword on Chinese social media,

the term ‘online celebrity economy’ was coined and emphasised by Weibo Corp and

iResearch in 2016.

In May 2016, Sina & Weibo Data Centre and iResearch(2016) released their first report

on online celebrities: The White Paper on Online Celebrities (网红生态白皮 书 ).

According to the report, there are two types of online celebrities who are active on

Chinese social media: one is the people who already are celebrities in real life; the other

is the grassroots, who become celebrities by generating intellectual properties on social

media. Since today’s Web2.0 grants more ordinary co-creative labourers access to the

public, moreover, according to the report (Ibid), more and more ordinary web users are taking efforts to become famous online, online grassroots celebrity has

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become an industry in China, instead of merely a sub-cultural phenomenon just as the

report states (Ibid).

Four periods can be addressed to commemorate the developments of online celebrities.

The first period started from 1997 to 2004, during which, writers who wrote e-books

such as AnneBaby became the first generation of online celebrities. The second period

started from 2005 to 2010, when grassroots celebrities began to spring up with the

development of the blog. The third period started from 2011 to 2016 with the rise of

microblogs such as Sina Weibo in China. During this period, online celebrities often

worked as opinion leaders. The fourth period started from 2016, embracing the era of

4G and the developments of the smart phone and mobile-based applications. Co-

creative labourers who are able to create interesting short videos are becoming

dominant among online celebrities (Sina & Weibo Data Centre and iResearch 2016).

The report also shows that in the first five months, of 2016, 36,410 online celebrities

who have gained 385 million followers contributed 71,571 billion views, 91.5 million

reposts, 40.6 million comments, and 1.6 billion likes to Weibo. As mentioned above,

short video creators are becoming more dominant among online celebrities; moreover,

the report also points out that the online celebrity economy became noticeable after

the short video creator @Papi 酱 went viral. The case of @Papi 酱 is illustrated as an

example showing how significant the profit and value an online celebrity creates can

be.

With 18.41 million followers, @Papi 酱 is now the most popular verified short video

creator on both Weibo and Miaopai. Starting by imitating different accents of different

provinces in China, @Papi 酱 began to win followers thanks to her vivid performance

and nice appearance. Later, @Papi 酱 became more popular thanks to her videos, which

are closely related to daily life. Recently, her videos began to concern hot

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social issues such as feminism and the Rio Olympic Games. As the Analysys (2016)

summarised, in short, the key element for @Papi 酱 to become successful is the

intellectual property created by her. On April 21st

, @Papi 酱 signed a contract valued

at 22 million Yuan (approximately 18 million USD) for her first advertisement. On

May 25th

2016, after signing a contract with a media company The Luogic, @Papi 酱

launched her private channel Papitube to encourage ordinary co-creative labourers to

create videos (pmcaff.com, 2016). According to pmcaff.com (2016), since in the

digital age, being influential means to have more followers and traffic, moreover,

traffic indicates more potential profit for individuals or media companies. By

launching a channel that creates traffic by the name of @Papi 酱, not only is the

traffic of Papitube is guaranteed, but also the brand value of @Papi 酱 and Papitube

will be built.

In July 2016, Weibo released its Second Quarter Report (Weibo Corp 2016).

According to the report, Weibo will keep investing in short video applications and

monetise the short videos created by users. It can be seen that on one hand, the

potential profits of short video productions by co-creative labourers are significant, on

the other hand, the influence of co-creative labourers, especially online celebrities, is

noticed by media companies.

2.3 Introduction of Miaopai and Weibo in China

Since in this research, co-creative labourers on Miaopai and Weibo are chosen as the

subject of the case study, the following parts give explicit introductions of the two

social media platforms.

2.3.1 Miaopai

Belonging to the Yixia Corporation, Miaopai is a video application that enables users

to shoot, edit, and share videos no longer than five minutes long on mobile phones.

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Sharing a strategic co-operative partnership with and invested in by the Weibo

Corporation, ever since Miaopai was launched in late 2013, it was embedded as the

official video player in Weibo4.0. Therefore, not only will all the videos posted on

Weibo become automatically uploaded through Miaopai, but also the views of Weibo

videos will count towards Miaopai’s traffic. In this research, the co-creative labourers

on China’s Weibo and Miaopai refer to the same group of people.

On 24th

November 2015, Miaopai gained 200 million US dollars in its D round of

financing. According to a report analysed by Woshipm (2016), by the end of March

2016, the daily active users on Miaopai reached 40 million people, and the daily

views on the platform exceed 700 million. Owning a market value of 1 billion US

dollars, Miaopai is now the biggest short video application in China.

Han Kun, the founder of Miaopai, ascribes the success of Miaopai to three reasons.

First, by collabourating with international media giants such as the Weibo

Corporation and YG Entertainment, this guaranteed Miaopai a huge amount of

potential users. Second, with the fast developments of mobile technology, since

nowadays, not almost everyone has a smart phone, embracing the age of 4G, making

and viewing short videos is becoming easier and portable. Finally, according to Han

Kun, since Miaopai was initially designed as a user-generated community, the activity

and traffic of Miaopai is ensured. Therefore, with the active participation of its users,

Miaopai is enabled to create profit and maintain users’ loyalty at the same time.

2.3.2 Weibo

Weibo is the Chinese word for “microblog”. Launched by the Sina Corporation on 14th

August 2009, Sina Weibo was initially one of various Weibos in China. However,

since on April 7th

2011, Sina Weibo launched its new domain name as weibo.com,

when talking about Weibo, it refers to Sina Weibo only.

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Weibo portrays itself as a leading social media for people to create, share, and

discover Chinese-language content. According to iResearch’s reports, by the end of

March 2011, Weibo already had 56.5% of China’s microblogging market (2011). By

the end of 2012, it had 503 million registered users (2013) and by the end of

September 2015, Sina Weibo had more than 500 million registered users, 222 million

monthly active users, and 100 million daily active users (Weibo Corp, 2015). Through

the years, Weibo has always been the most popular microblog, and one of the

dominant social media platforms in China.

2.4 Co-creative Labour in A Project of Short Video Production Launched by Weibo Corporation

The motivation of this research is a supporting project of co-creative labourers

launched by Weibo Corporation in short video production. On 31st

March 2016,

Weibo Corporation launched a project to encourage the Miaopai and Weibo users

who create short videos to become verified as “short video masters”. According to the

statement (@WeiboVideo 2016), co-creative labourers who met the following

requirements could apply for verification: (1) Co-creative labourers who can regularly

produce at least five high quality short videos per month; (2) Co-creative labourers

who have posted at least five short videos on Weibo or Miaopai during the month

before applying; and (3) Co-creative labourers who got more than 100,000 views in

the month preceding the application.

Weibo promised to: (1) Provide post-promotion service named Fentiao（粉条）to those

who are verified. According to Weibo, Fentiao is the short name for Fensitoutiao (粉

丝 头 条 ), which literally means headlines for followers in Chinese. Since by

employing Fentiao on posts one wants to promote, the posts could be placed at the top

of the Weibo start page of one’s followers for 24 hours, Weibo claims that it

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significantly helps increase the effectiveness of one’s post. In this project, Fentiao

provided by Weibo values more than 50 billion Yuan (32 billion USD) but offered for

free. (2) To help verified short video creators attract followers by recommending them

to ordinary Weibo users. (3) To help verified short video creators monetise their

videos. In order to satisfy the promise, two methods were introduced. One is a mode

of rewards, which allows the audience pay small amounts of money directly to the

short video creators after watching videos. In this mode, giving money to short video

creators totally depends on the audience. The other method is pay-to-watch (Weibo

Corp, 2016).

Figure 1. The recommendation list of Weibo. A short video creator was placed at

the top of this list.

The project was welcomed by co-creative labourers on Weibo and Miaopai. By the

end of April, the announcement post had 5,885 likes, 1,010 reposts and 1,594

comments. According to the comments, more than 300 Weibo users applied for

verification. Three months later, some of the short video creators who were verified became online celebrities such as @马克 Malik and @软软其实不太硬. By the end

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of July, @马克 Malik had 1.32 million followers, and @软软其实不太硬 had 1.81

million followers.

However, since the observation shows that Weibo didn't deprive verifications of

people who can't produce 5 videos per month afterwards, moreover, as the project just

helps or encourages ordinary users to get verified, in this study, the project is

introduced as a motivation rather than a case. The case study concerns people who get

verified through this project rather than the project.

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Chapter 3: Previous Research

In this chapter, concepts and theories concerning co-creative labourers, labour, value

creation, and exploitation are presented. Related studies of co-creative labourers in the

context of China such as online grassroots celebrities will also be introduced. For

every concept, a brief history of how it developed will be provided. At the end of this

section, the current progress and the existing gaps in this field will be discussed.

3.1 Co-creation and Co-creative Labour

According to Banks and Deuze, co-creation refers to “the phenomenon of consumers

increasingly participating in the process of making and circulating media content”

(2009, 420). Therefore, co-creative labourers accordingly refers to people “who

participate in the process of making media as co-creators of content” (Ibid). The term

co-creative labourer can be traced back to McLuhan and Nevitt’s Take Today (1972),

when they stated that with the developments of electric technology, the customer

would behave more actively and finally become a producer in the process of

producing (Ibid, 4).

Later, the blurred identity of producer and customer/consumer was re-addressed and

coined from a business context by Toffler as prosumer, in his book The Third Wave

(1980). According to Toffler, since the more affluent society becomes, the more

individualised the choice, the market of standardised production will ultimately

become saturated when basic consumer demands are met (Ibid). To continue growing

profits, business should develop the customised market and initiate the production of

customised products (Toffler 1980, 23). Thereafter, based on the ethics of

“do-it-yourself” which was first favoured in the 1950s (McKellar and Sparke 2004,

179), customers will have a more important part in the process of producing. With the

developments of customisation, the current mass production and standardised

consumption will be replaced by prosumption, and the boundaries between producer

and consumer will undoubtedly become blurred (Toffler 1980).

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Don Tapscott also described how customers generate content and value on media by

introducing the term networked intelligence (1996). According to them, since

knowledge is the driving force of the economy in future, with the developments in

informational technology, customers are able to specify their opinions and demands

when purchasing on the Information Highway, and organizations should change their

traditional viewpoint on their employees. However, co-creative labourers and

prosumers didn’t embrace that much theoretical elabouration until Web2.0 was

valued.

Coined by Darcy DiNucci, Web2.0 was initially depicted as a technical breakthrough

where the outward form of the Web will multiply, and information receiving will

become fragmented (1999 retrieved by Darcyd 2008). Later, Lev Manovich provided

insightful understanding of the outward evolution of web. According to him, since the

ongoing developments of technology will give consumers more agency and autonomy,

an overlap of consumer and producer will occur, and the boundaries between work and

leisure, the professional and the amateur will become blurred (Manovich 2002, 44, 99;

see also Jenkins 2006, 20). On Web2.0 media, customers will gradually demand more

than a suitable product but the happiness and enjoyment of taking part in producing,

prosumers instead of pure producers and consumers will become the majority on the

Internet.

In 2004, O’Reilly redefined and popularised the term “Web2.0”, later, he states in What is Web2.0 (2005) that since future software will be built on the Web instead of

the desktop, user-generated content can be “harnessed” to create value. Despite waged

labour, customers will build business for media companies. Thereafter, the term

Web2.0 has gradually developed and is now widely accepted as the World Wide Web’s move “from personal websites to blogs and blog site aggregation, from

25

publishing to participation, from web content as the outcome of large up-front

investment to an ongoing and interactive process, and from content management

systems to links based on tagging (folksonomy)” (Flew 2008, 19). Online

participation of Web users and the content generated by them has become more

significant on Web2.0.

Jenkins (2006, 13) states the boundaries between consumer and producer are

undoubtedly blurred. With the development of theories on online co-creative labour

and online value creation, the discussions of co-creative labourers and prosumers

gradually moves from identity itself to the relationship between co-creative labourers

and media companies, as well as to what extent co-creative labour and labourers are

associated with exploitation. Scholars hold different opinions on the extent which co-

creative labourers and labour are associated with exploitation. Since the discussions

on exploitation and the exploited class originate from Marx’s labour and value theory,

before looking at the concrete debates on co-creative labour and exploitation, Marx

and Marxist perceptions on labour, labourers, and value creation should be reviewed.

3.2 Marxist Theories on Labour and Labourer, Immaterial Labour, and Value Creation

Fuchs describes Marx’s theory as a labour theory of value. Drawing conclusions

“from the analysis of the total labour time that is needed for the production of goods”

(Fuchs 2010, 181), Fuchs points out that the theory of labour and value serves as the

foundation of Marx’s theories of political economy.

Marx claims that the term labour should be understood from three aspects. First,

labour is conducted by human beings. Second, labour is a process of consuming and

producing. These two arguments can be found in the following statements: (1) “labour

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is, first of all, a process between man and nature, a process by which man, through his

own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and

nature” (Marx 1867, 283). Therefore, besides the fact that Marx believed only human

activities can be called labour, from this citation it can also be seen that Marx defines

labour as a process of producing. Then, for humans who participate in the process,

Marx describes them as labourer or proletarian in his work. (2) Since “in the labour-

process… man’s activity, via the instruments of labour, affects an alternation in the

object of labour which was intended from the outset” (Ibid, 287). Moreover, “labour

uses up its material factors, its subject and instruments, consumes them, and is

therefore a process of consumption” (Ibid, 290). On one hand, Marx argues that not

every human activity can be called labour and on the other, Marx draws a distinction

between labour and labour power. The latter refers to “those mental and physical

capabilities existing in a human being,” (Ibid, 270) is used by labourers and in their

labour (Ibid, 283). Third, labour is intentionally conducted. This is introduced in

Marx’s Economic Manuscripts: “real labour is a purposeful activity aimed at the

creation of a use value, at the appropriation of natural material in a manner which

corresponds to particular needs” (1861, 55). The argument can also be found in

Marx’s description of the simple elements of the labour process when he states that an

activity can be called labour only if it is purposeful (Ibid, 284).

Then, when it comes to the definition of value, Marx claims that there are two types

of value in a productive process: one is use value and the other is exchange value.

According to Marx, use value is embodied though a good’s utility (Marx 1867, 126)

while exchange value is the quantitative expression that pushes products into capital

circulation (Ibid, 11). In the process of exchange and capital accumulation, money is

the general equivalent and expression of exchange value (Marx 1867, 58, 251, 399).

However, according to Marx, even though money is increased through capital

accumulation, capital doesn’t equal money. Marx perceives capital accumulation as a

process based on the exploitation of surplus value. During the process, since surplus

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value is obtained by capital “through the production process consists only of the

excess of surplus labour over necessary labour” (1857 1858, 339), when accumulating

surplus value, workers are compelled to work more than necessary to satisfy their

immediate needs. Since the production of surplus value costs workers’ labour but

capitalists nothing, the outcomes would ultimately be owned by capitalists (Marx

1867, 672). According to Marx, the accumulation of capital is in fact, based on the

deprivation of workers’ surplus labour and the self-valorisation in capitalism is

vampire-like (Ibid, 256).

Marx’s statement on value was further developed and introduced into business by

Peter Drucker in the 1970s. Following the trail of value in industry, Drucker

introduced the term contribution value (1974, 23) to measure a company’s brand

value. In the 1980s, Michael Porter popularised the term value chain (1985) to

broaden the measurement of companies’ value. In the 1990s, thanks to the service

economy and servitisation (Vandermerwe and Rada 1988, 314-324) being boosted by

tourism, value creation outside the effort of a company but done by the customers

began to receive attention.

According to Normann and Ramires (1994), based on the “do-it-yourself” ethics which

were first favoured in the 1950s and regained popularity in 1990s, customers began to

contribute more in the process of value creation by using the services offered by

companies. Normann and Ramires illustrated an example of how IKEA encourages

customers to assemble their own furniture to support his argument. According to him,

since the goal of IKEA in such a situation “is not to create value for customers but to

mobilise customers to create their own value from the company’s various offerings”

(Ibid, 69), by encouraging customers to offer labour, both customers’ personal

satisfaction and the brand value of a company such as encouraging co-operation and

participation are achieved. The values created by customers should be addressed.

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In late 1990s, the American term Informational Highway was coined. Through the

years and the fast developments of digital technology, when it comes to the Web2.0

era where social media bring prosumption more centrality (Ritzer and Jurgensson

2010, 14), how do media companies create value? How is value co-created by

companies and the online co-creative labourers? Such questions became fascinating

for media scholars (Banks and Humphreys 2008; Ritzer and Jurgensson 2010; Fuchs,

2010; Arvidsson and Colleoni 2012). Jenkins (2006, 23) states that in Web2.0 the

majority of content produced by co-creative labourers is intellectual property;

therefore, since such property is generally immaterial, before looking at how value is

created by online co-creative labourers, the concept of immaterial labour should be

introduced.

The term immaterial labour was coined by Maurizio Lazzarato in 1996. According to

him, immaterial labour is closely associated with intellectual instead of manual labour

(Lazzarato 1996, 113). Lazzarato defines immaterial labour as “the labour that

produced the informational and cultural content of the commodity” (1996, 133).

According to him, there are two aspects of immaterial labour; on one hand, regarding

the informational content of the commodity, Lazzarato claims that immaterial labour

can refer directly to the “changes taking place in workers' labour processes in big

companies in the industrial and tertiary sectors, where the skills involved in direct

labour are increasingly skills involving cybernetics and computer control” (Ibid). On

the other hand, regarding the activity that produces the cultural content of the

commodity, Lazzarato argues that the “immaterial labour involves a series of

activities that are not normally recognized as ‘work’ — in other words, the kinds of

activities involved in defining and fixing cultural and artistic standards, fashions,

tastes, consumer norms, and, more strategically, public opinion” (Ibid).

29

Two points are stressed by Lazzarato when understanding immaterial labour. First,

although Lazzarato states that immaterial labour is more closely related to the

intellectual rather than manual, immaterial labour is not elite. This argument can be

found in the following statement: “I should add that this form of productive activity is

not limited only to highly skilled workers; it refers to a use value of labour power

today, and, more generally, to the form of activity of every productive subject within

the post-industrial society” (Lazzarato, 136). Then, since immaterial labour largely

concerns intellectual works, Lazzarato claims that immaterial labour is closely

associated with productive activities in creative industries. According to him,

“audio-visual production, advertising, fashion, the production of software,

photography, cultural activities, and so forth” can all be viewed as productions of the

“classic immaterial” creative industries (Ibid, 137).

Therefore, back to how values are created in the context of Web2.0, since immaterial

labour, which is closely related to intellectual works, has become dominant in

productive activities, in 2004, Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004, 7) introduced the

concept of value co-creation to illustrate how consumers are empowered to create

value in media industries. Green and Jenkins later argued that within the new digital

economy, wealth production is driven by media consumers’ engagement (2009, 213).

Since the debate on value creation is associated with the position and marketing

strategies of a company, in the realm of business, a transition from the goods-centred

logic to the service and customer-centred logic can be noticed. Observing the success

of companies which moved from a make-and-sell strategy to a sense-and-respond

strategy (Haeckel 1999), a customer-oriented logic based on “the customer is always a

co-producer” (Vargo and Lusch 2004, 10-11) emerged. This replaced the traditional

goods-centred and production dominant logic in industrial production and was further

developed into customer-centred logic. According to Voima, Heinonen, and Strandvik

(2010), customer-centred logic “recognises that value formation is not always an

active process (124)”, and it may be “a passive process, which the customer is not

30

even aware of. Through the cognitive, mental, and emotional processes customers

consciously or unconsciously interpret interactions and reconstruct an accumulated

customer reality where value is embedded (Ibid)”.

Since customer-created and determined value is becoming increasingly significant in

business, reviewing how immaterial labour and co-created value are understood in

previous studies, the relationships between customer and media companies, as well as

employer and employee should be examined. Therefore, the following section

presents how previous research understood exploitation, as well as the link between

co-creative labour, co-creative labourers, and exploitation.

3.3 Studies and Debates on Exploitation

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, exploitation can be defined by three

aspects, “the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their

work”, “the action of making use of and benefiting from resources” and “the fact of

making use of a situation to gain unfair advantage for oneself”. There are two ends of

exploitation: the exploiter and the exploited. According to Roemer, exploiters can be

defined as “agents who can command with their income more labour embodied in

goods than the labour they perform” (Roemer 1985, 30). The exploited, on the other

hand, refers to agents who gain less from the labour they offer.

Usually, the term exploitation is labelled as an unfair action in which one takes

advantage of another only because of their unequal position; however, in Marx’s

theories, even though the exploitation of surplus value is often mentioned to criticise

the vampire-like capitalism, the moral framing characteristics of exploitation is not

discussed, and the notion of exploitation is only viewed in the field of labour relations

(Fuchs 2010, 184). According to Marx, the ideal distribution of welfare in society

should obey two principles: one is that welfare is distributed according to one’s work;

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the other is that welfare is distributed according to one’s need (Elster 1978, 3),

exploitation occurs when neither of these principles are obtained. Therefore, when the

worker doesn’t enjoy the fruit of his own labour or the “differences between what a

worker makes and what he gets cannot be justified by redistribution according to need”

(Ibid), the labour offered by the worker exceeds their immediate need, surplus value is

created, labourers and their labour are exploited.

One term should be clarified when it comes to exploitation: alienation. Marx

describes alienation as not having behavioural autonomy when one should, or not

having ownership on something when one should. Although there is no accurate

definition of alienation in Marx’s works, Marxist and post-Marxist scholars such as

Christian Fuchs make an explicit explanation of the term. According to Fuchs,

alienation refers to the situation when “humans are not in control of fundamental

aspects of their lives” (2013, 349) and in the economy, alienation can refer to “the

non-control of labour-power, the objects of labour, the instruments of labour and the

products of labour” (Ibid). Then, when viewing the relationship between alienation

and exploitation, since Roemer states that “the root of alienation is the separation of

one's labour from oneself” (1985, p32), exploitation occurs when one's labour is put

into goods which are produced for exchange and since some people alienate more

labour than others, this alienation is differential. According to Roemer (Ibid),

exploitation can be used to measure the degree of which people are alienated under

capitalism.

Through the years, Marx’s theories on labour and value have been attacked by

capitalists since the premise of his argument is “capitalists are unproductive” (Fuchs

2010, 184). Studying Marx's theory in the 1980s, Roemer rejected Marx’s labour

theory of value. According to him, exploitation can exist beyond employment; the

relationship between exploiter and exploited is not “A exploits B” but rather “A is an exploiter” and “B is exploited” (1985, 31). Roemer describes exploitation as a

32

relationship between a person and society, since Roemer believes that exploitation is

based on “the transfer of the person's labour to the society, and the reverse transfer of

society's labour to the person, as embodied in goods the person claims” (Ibid, 31). He

perceives exploitation as a result of the unequal possession of productive resource

instead of solely occurring in a coercive production process.

In the 1990s, David Ramsay Steele introduced the term marginal outputs and argued

that “under competitive market conditions, a worker tends to be paid what his labour

contributes to output, no more and no less, the same goes for an owner of a machine or

piece of real estate”(Steele 1992, 143). Through the years, the debates on whether

Marxist value theory of labour is reasonable continued. When it comes to the age of

Web2.0, two opposing schools stand out: Marxism and the Cyber-libertarianism.

Drawing on Cyber-libertarianism, Tapscott and Williams (2007, 207) introduced the

model of Wikinomics to illustrate how co-creative labourers willingly generate content

on the Internet. According to them, since in the digital age, economy is based on mass

collabouration, as long as co-creative labourers get adequate rewards such as

recognition and satisfaction, it is too far to say that co-creative labourers are exploited.

This argument was disputed by Fuchs in 2008. According to Fuchs (2008, 1), since

Wikinomics pays little to the public’s joint effort but takes one’s spare time by

encouraging co-creative labourers to offer labour without charge, Wikinomics merely

represents a novel way for capital accumulation. He later re-affirmed this thought by

arguing: “while no product is sold to the users, the users themselves are sold as

commodities to advertisers” (Fuchs 2010, 189). According to Fuchs, exploitation is

objective; it won’t stop even though co-creative labourers willingly create content

online.

Partly based on Cyber-libertarianism, Ritzer and Jurgensson (2010) re-addressed Tapscott and William’s argument that as long as co-creative labourers are adequately rewarded, it is too far to say that they are exploited. Even though they also accepted

33

that profits generated by co-creative labourers online are ultimately owned by media

companies, by arguing that production nowadays is abundant compared to the past,

Web2.0 brings more centrality to prosumption, and a new prosumer economy

emerges. According to Ritzer and Jurgensson (2010, 27), co-creative labourers create

content whenever and whatever they want, exploitation doesn’t necessarily exist,

effectiveness rather than efficiency of products and services is valued as more

important.

Later, Marxist scholar Fisher (2012) supported Fuchs by arguing that the free labour

provided by co-creative labourers offers a new way for capital to accumulate, “particularly the production of information through communication and sociality” (Fisher 2012, 189). However, since Marxist overlooked the agency of co-creative

labourers, when viewing whether there is a difference between ordinary web users

and those who are more influential such as online grassroots celebrities, the capability

of co-creative labourers and their products should be assessed.

3.4 Creativity, Efficiency and Effectiveness of Product, and Online Celebrities

In the context of Web2.0, since creativity is the key element of content producing

(Howkins cited by Hartley 2005, 3), in this section, concept of creativity and its

relationship with co-creative labourers will be viewed. Then, according to Ritzer and

Jurgensson (2010), since in the future, companies would pay more attention to the

effectiveness instead of efficiency of the product one co-creative labourer produces,

these two concepts will be introduced as parameters to evaluate co-creative labourer’s

capability. Moreover, as Weibo Corp relates verified short video creators closely to

online celebrities (@WeiboVideo 2016), relevant studies of online celebrity in China

will also be introduced.

There are several definitions of creativity. According to Mumford, creativity “involves

34

the production of novel, useful products” (2003, 110), and Robert E Franken defines

creativity as “the tendency to generate or recognise ideas, alternatives or possibilities

that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others and entertaining

ourselves and others” (1993, 396). However, starting from a business point of view,

Weisberg claims: “creative refers to novel products of value…and creativity… refers

both to the capacity to produce such works… and to the activity of generating such

products” (1993, 4).

In creative industries, creativity is the key element of content producing. John

Howkins states: “the creative idea leads to or enhances a commercial output with a

commercial value” (Howkins cited by Hartley, 118). According to Charles Leadbeater

(cited by Hartley 2006, 127), creativity is closely related to knowledge that

“knowledge sharing and creation is at the heart of innovation in all fields… and

innovation is the driving force of wealth creation”. Scholars hold different opinions on

whether everyone has creativity in different disciplines. In the field of psychology,

Guilford (1967) and Kaufman (2009) claim that when defining creativity as a multi-

dimensional ability, everyone is creative. When it comes to the discipline of creative

industries, even though Aoki (1993, 826) expanded the term by introducing the

“audience recoding right”, according to him, instead of creating brand new content,

contents produced by re-organising existing materials can also be viewed as creation.

John Howkins states that creativity in creative industries “is not easy or routine, it is

not fair, it is elitist and collabourative, it is not easily regulated” (Cited by Hartley

2006, 121).

Due to the limited literature concerning the measurements of creativity in creative

industries, the issue of whether everyone has creativity in creative industries remains

unsettled. However, Ritzer and Jurgensson (2010) raised another parameter to

measure the capability of co-creative labourers. According to them, since in the era of Web2.0, content produced by co-creative labourers is abundant, instead of efficiency,

35

the effectiveness of products and services would be given more attention by media

companies. As the project launched by Weibo Corp reflects both the efficiency and

effectiveness required by media companies: co-creative labourers who want to be

verified should produce videos regularly and have certain views before the

verification (@WeiboVideo 2016), relevant concepts concern online celebrities in

China will also be introduced.

The phenomenon of online celebrities that includes online grassroots users should be

introduced. In China, online celebrity is becoming an industry rather than merely a

sub-cultural phenomenon (Sina & Weibo Data Centre and iResearch, 2016).

According to Gregorio-Godeo and Ramon-Torrijos (2014, 413), the group of online

celebrities in China is mainly composed of people who were originally “ordinary

persons” but gain fame via self-performance and presentations on the Internet.

Graeme Turner (2009) introduced the term demotic turn to illustrate how Web2.0

helps to increase visibility for ordinary persons. Since more newspaper reports or

personal analyses rather than academic studies can be found on this topic, not much

research can be introduced in this section.

3.5 Current Progress and Existing Gaps in the Field

It is noticeable that the notions of co-creative labourer and labour embrace much

theoretical elabouration after Web2.0 was introduced. Moreover, when it comes to the

debate on exploitation, two opposing schools stand out: Marxism and Cyber-

libertarianism.

Drawing on the Marxist standpoint, Fuchs expanded the notion of the exploited class.

According to him, since in informational capitalism, unpaid co-creative labourers are

“forced to permanently sell their own labour power per contracts to capitalist

corporations that outsource or subcontract labour power” (Fuchs 2010, 185),

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exploitation is objective, and free work offered by co-creative labourers only

represents a novel way for capital to accumulate. He further claims that since many of

self-employed labourers constantly shift from self-employment to temporary labour,

unpaid labour, and different identities constantly, self-employed co-creative labourers

are not a fixed but dynamic category (Ibid, 186).

Partly based on Cyber-libertarianism, Ritzer and Jurgensson (2010) then argued that

the emergence of co-creative labour implies a new form of economy. According to

them, since the content produced by co-creative labourers is abundant on Web2.0

websites, on one hand, as long as the co-creative labourers are adequately rewarded, it

is too far to say that they are exploited. On the other hand, instead of efficiency, the

effectiveness of the products and services will be emphasised by media companies.

However, since during this review, the lack of literature on the creativity or other

capabilities of co-creative labourers is noticed, studies of different types of co-

creative labourers, for example the ordinary web users and online celebrities, as well

as their relationships with media companies are needed.

Based on Fuchs’ concept and approach toward the exploited class and exploitation,

and introducing Ritzer and Jurgensson’s (2010) efficiency and effectiveness of

products to measure co-creative labourers’ capabilities, the following part introduces

the theoretical standpoints of this research.

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Chapter 4: Theoretical Framework

This chapter aims to give a comprehensive review of concepts and theories related to

the case study from a theoretical perspective. Fuchs (2010; 2013) and Ritzer and Jurgensson’s (2010) theories will be highlighted to introduce relevant approaches. Three sections are included in this chapter. First of all, since the research is based on Fuchs’ approach to co-creative labourers and exploitation, a systematic review of how

Fuchs defines the exploited class and exploitation is provided. Second, as is

mentioned above, co-creative labourers are divided into two types: influential co-

creative labourers or online celebrities, and ordinary co-creative labourers.

Considering Ritzer and Jurgensson’s (2010) statement that in the digital age,

capitalists are unable to control co-creative labourers, and moreover, co-creative

labourers can gain personal satisfaction when producing content, agency is introduced

as a term closely related to the self-empowerment, as well as willingness of co-

creative labourers. Third, as is mentioned above, Ritzer and Jurgensson have argued

that in the future, media companies will pay more attention to the effectiveness,

instead of efficiency, of products and services (Ibid.). Subsequent to examining how

media companies perceive co-creative labourers, these two dimensions will be

introduced as parameters to evaluate the attitude of media companies towards co-

creative labourers; concepts, as well as their relationship to labourers will also be

clarified.

4.1 Fuchs’ Approach to Labour, Labourers and Exploitation There are two stages in Fuchs’ approach to exploitation and labourers. In the first

stage, Fuchs introduces his approach to exploitation and labourers in informational

capitalism; according to him, labourers in this period are knowledge labourers who

create intellectual property. Moreover, since unpaid labourers are ‘forced to sell their

own labour power per contracts to capitalist corporations that outsource or

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subcontract labor power’ (Fuchs 2010, 185), the notion of the exploited class needs to

be expanded: unpaid knowledge labourers belong to the exploited class (Fuchs 2010,

88).

The second stage is the further development of Fuchs’ theories on exploitation and

labour in social media. At this stage, not only does Fuchs elaborate on the

characteristics of intellectual productivity: according to him, the knowledge created

by co-creative labourers online will not be used up, but remain and accumulate;

furthermore, he explains how capital is accumulated by media companies on social

media.

4.1.1 Unpaid Labour and Labourers are Exploited Fuchs selectively draws his arguments on Erik Olin Wright’s theories. According to Wright, three aspects are necessary to form an exploited class: ‘1. Inverse interdependent welfare, the material welfare of one group of people

causally depends on the material deprivations of another.

2. Exclusion: The exploited are asymmetrically excluded from accessing certain

productive resources. 3. Appropriation: Those who control the productive resources appropriate the fruits of labour of the exploited’ (Wright 1989; 2005a cited by Fuchs 2010, 185)

According to Fuchs, providing the first two criteria only, Wright excludes under

classes such as ‘unemployed, retirees, permanently disabled, students, people on

welfare, and house-workers’ from the exploited class. However, since ‘in

informational capitalism, the human brain has become an important productive force’,

jobs as well as labours are precarious (Fuchs 2008b cited by Fuchs 2010, 185); since

more and more people are facing the dynamics of shifting between different

categories such as temporary labourer, unpaid labourer or self-employed labourer, Fuchs argues that the notion of Wright’s exploited class needs to be expanded.

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Fuchs adopts the Marxist definition of economic exploitation. According to him,

economic exploitation refers to ‘the existence of an exploiting class that deprives at

least one exploited class of its resources, excludes it from ownership, and appropriates

resources produced by the exploited’ (Fuchs 2010, 186).

Then, two types of knowledge labour are introduced by Fuchs to broaden Wright’s

exploited class. According to Fuchs, knowledge labour includes direct knowledge

labour, which can produce knowledge goods or provide knowledge services;

additionally, it includes indirect knowledge labour, which produces and reproduces the

social conditions of the existence of capital and wage labour (2010, 186). Arguing that

even though the unpaid labour doesn't produce immediate products, it produces and

reproduces ‘the social conditions of the existence of capital affects, communication,

sex, housework and common knowledge in everyday life’ (Ibid., 186),

Fuchs points out that it is not necessary to exclude the under classes from exploitation

since they are reproductive. Moreover, since capital would not be accumulated

without activities in a common societal infrastructure freely sustained by unpaid

labour, unpaid reproductive workers are exploited by both capital and waged labour.

Fuchs further disputes Wright’s theories on self-employers, since Wright takes the

self-employed as capitalists. According to Fuchs, despite the fact that they own and

control their means of production, such as brains and computers, since knowledge

labour and its products are precarious, and moreover, self-employed workers ‘are

forced to permanently sell their own labour power per contracts to capitalist

corporations that outsource or subcontract labour power’ (Ibid., 186), they should be

considered as part of the exploited class as well, ‘all members of society except for

itself’ (Ibid, 188).

4.1.2 Capital Accumulation on Social Media When it comes to co-creative labourers and exploitation on social media platforms,

firstly, Fuchs elaborates on the characteristics of knowledge production online. According to him, knowledge only needs to be produced once online, and ‘can be

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infinitely reproduced at low costs. . .distributed at high speed, there is no physical

wear and tear of the product; knowledge is not used up in consumption, but can be

reworked and built upon’ (2010, 190).

Then, when it comes to the relationship between internet users and media companies,

considering two types of labourers who exist online: the waged labourer, and unpaid

user/content producer (Fuchs 2010, 190), Fuchs develops a framework to show how

media companies accumulate capital by exploiting both kinds of labourers.

Figure 2 Fuchs 2013, 215 According to Fuchs, two steps of exploitation occur in the capital accumulation on

social media. The first step is the investing of money to buy ‘capital such as

technologies and labour power’; consequently, waged labourers who provide technical

skills and sustain social media are exploited. In the figure above, the outcome of

production is P1; as Fuchs states, P1 is ‘not a commodity that is directly sold, but

rather the free services provided by media companies’ (Fuchs 2013, 215).

The second step is the provision to users of free access to services and platforms:

media companies encourage unpaid users to become content producers. In accordance

with the figure above, the constant and variable capital invested by social media

companies (C’, v1) provides a prerequisite for user activities in the production process P2, by encouraging users to produce content such as user-generated data, personal

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data, and transaction data about their browsing behaviour and communication

behaviour; a large quantity of this information is sold as a commodity to third-party

advertisers (Ibid.). Therefore, ‘while no product is sold to the users, the users

themselves are sold as a commodity to advertisers’ (Fuchs 2010, 191).

Since the more users a platform has, the higher the advertising rates it can charge,

productive labour time that is exploited by capital involves both the working hours of

waged labourers, and the time spent by unpaid users on social media (Fuchs 2010,

191). Surplus value is co-created by both the employees and unpaid social media

users.

Relevant to the context of this study is that while on the one hand, co-creative labourers

on Chinese short video applications are generally unpaid, on the other, according to

Weibo Corp the Second Quarter Report. 2016(Weibo Corp 2016), Weibo has the

intention to commercialise user-generated short videos; Fuchs’ approach to co-creative

labourers, labour and exploitation will serve as the basis of this study.

4.2 Agency of Co-creative Labourers Since Ritzer and Jurgensson state that in the digital age, Web 2.0 gives prosumption

greater emphasis (2010, 14): on the one hand, the inability of capitalists to control

prosumers is obvious; on the other hand, prosumers are able to assume increasingly

active roles in online content production. When it comes to the willingness and

agency of co-creative labourers as Ritzer and Jurgensson (2010, 27) state, a term

closely related to the empowerment brought by technology and motivation for co-

creative labourers will be introduced: the agency.

According to Malhotra and Schuler, agency is one of the concepts which associates

closely with the essence of empowerment (2005, 75). In their view, since agency

refers to the ability of a labourer to maintain control over resources and to make strategic choices, the agency of a co-creative labourer practically affects the outcome

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produced by a labourer.

Kabeer (1999, 438) defines agency as directly connected with the ability of

individuals to set their own goals and act upon them. Since according to him,

compared to empowerment, agency emphasises the process of engaging people rather

than what is done for and with them, considering Amartya Sen’s description, agency

is the freedom of a person to ‘achieve in pursuit of whatever goals or values he or she

regards as important’ (1985, 203). In this thesis, agency is introduced as a concept

closely related to co-creative labourers’ willingness.

Thus, turning to the case study of co-creative labourers on Weibo and Miaopai, since

on the one hand, there are a number of co-creative labourers who have actively taken

part in the project and been vertified as ‘short video creators’; on the other, Weibo

Corp demands that vertified short video creators create videos regularly. In this

research, the agency of co-creative labourers is introduced as an open measure closely

related to both the motivation of people who want to be online celebrities, and the

quality of the content produced by co-creative labourers.

4.3 Efficiency and Effectiveness of Products and Their Relationships with Co-creative Labourers According to Ritzer and Jurgensson (2010, 16), given that in the future, content

produced by unpaid co-creative labourers will become abundant, the effectiveness

instead of efficiency of the products and services will be emphasised by media

companies. Therefore, in the following section, concepts concerning the two

parameters of products, as well as their relationships with co-creative labourers’

capabilities will be introduced.

Since a ‘product’ mainly refers to the content produced by co-creative labourers in

this thesis, by relating the efficiency and effectiveness of products accordingly to online co-creative labourers, these two parameters will be introduced when examining

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how media companies perceive co-creative labourers, for what kinds of products

media companies need most, and what capabilities a co-creative labourer should

maintain.

4.3.1 Efficiency of Products and Labour Efficiency According to Ritzer and Jurgensson (2010, 27), the efficiency of a product is closely

related to labour productivity. Therefore, the efficiency of a product indicates not only

the productivity of a co-creative labourer, but also related to the labour efficiency.

Usually, there are two ways of evaluating labour efficiency. One is to compare the

number of hours actually required to produce a given product with those usually

required to do so; if the workforce is producing products at below the usual rate, its

labourers are considered as efficient. The other is to look at how many units of

products or services are produced within a given time. Instead of evaluating labour

efficiency, however, this calculation is usually used for a company to determine what

its standard is. In this research, Stuesb, Marty and Sun’s (2010) descriptions and

approach on labour efficiency are emphasised.

Stuesb et al. (2010) have applied the concept of economic efficiency to labour

resources. In their view, since economic efficiency refers to “the production of goods

and service (i.e. productivity) from a given quantity (i.e. cost)” (Ibid, 265), labour

efficiency is ‘a measure of labor productivity per unit of labor cost’ – in other

words… a measure of labor resource utilization’ (Ibid).

Examining the topic from a business point of view, Stuesb et al (2010) relate labour

efficiency closely with employee motivation. According to them, since strong

motivation can result in higher productivity, and moreover, the higher the productivity

per unit, the lower the labour costs, labour efficiency is the percentage of labour

productivity and costs (Ibid). In this thesis, the efficiency of labour is closely related to labourer productivity per unit. The more content a co-creative labourer produces in

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a given time, the more efficient he or she is.

Thus, in addressing the first sub-research question, ‘How do verified “short video

creators” on Weibo and Miaopai perceive themselves in media industries’, since all

the short video creators joined the short video project and get verified willingly,

agency, as a concept closely related to the willingness of co-creative labourers, will be

introduced to measure a co-creative labourer’s efficiency of producct. Then, for the

second sub-research question, ‘How do media companies perceive co-creative

labourers on Weibo and Miaopai’, the efficiency as a quantitative term will be

introduced to media companies for evaluating a co-creative labourer’s capability.

4.3.2 Effectiveness of Products and Four Capabilities for Co-creative Labourers to be Effective Online According to Ritzer and Jurgensson (2010, 30), effectiveness emphasises the quality

instead of quantity of a product. Therefore, as Fuchs states that (2013) in the digital

age, traffic means potential profits, in this research, effectiveness of a product refers

to the influence of a user generated content. Then, average reposts, comments and

likes are introduced as measurements to measure the effectiveness of user generated

content.

When it comes to the relationship between a product's effectiveness and co-creative

labourer’s capabilities, since in March, Weibo Corp launches a project to encourage

people who can create effective contents to be influential online. According to their

statement: ‘Do you want to be as influential as @Papi 酱 @艾克里里? Join us in the

short video creator supporting project…Co-creative labourers should have 10,000 views

during the month before application’ (@WeiboVideo 2016), Weibo closely relates

product effectiveness with a individual’s online influence. Four dimensions of being a

successful online celebrity as Weibo addressed: ‘(1) be original, (2) be unique, (3) keep improving the quality of their content, and (4) have the capability to monetise their intellectual property by encouraging their followers to access it (Sina &

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Weibo Data Centre and iResearch 2016)’; will be introduced to evaluate a co-creative

labourer’s capability concerning product effectiveness in the eyes of media

companies.

Therefore, in this thesis, the efficiency of product is closely related to a co-creative

labourer’s productivity and labour efficiency. The effectiveness of product is valued

by a co-creative labourer’s online influence.

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Chapter 5: Methodology

This chapter is divided into three sections. First, the research design of this study is

explained. According to Saunders et al (2013), since a research starts from a research

philosophy, the epistemology which guides the research is discussed as well. Second,

to answer the research questions, a small-scale case study of co-creative labourers on

Weibo and Miaopai is conducted. The reasons why a case study was chosen are

provided, furthermore, detailed information of the data and data collection are given

in this section. Third, the limitations and ethics of this study are discussed at the end

of this chapter.

5.1 Research Design The research consists two sections. First, a theoretical research is conducted.

Reflecting on Kuhn’s (1970) argument that studies are based on the accumulation of

previous studies, this research has been done in the previous research and theoretical

framework. Relevant concepts as well as approached assessed in the part will be

applied in the upcoming research. Second, a case study is conducted. Since according

to Pierre Bourdieu(Cited by McNay 2001, 147), knowledge can only be attained

within certain context of socially structured society, focusing on the co-creative

labourers on Chinese Weibo and Miaopai, the case study aims to get an in-depth

understanding of how co-creative labourers are exploited on Chinese social media and

contribute to the collective understandings of co-creative labourers and exploitation

from a Chinese perspective.

5.2 Case study of the Co-creative labourers on Chinese Weibo and Miaopai According to Yin (2009), a case study is an empirical inquiry regarding a

contemporary phenomenon within a social context. Therefore, by conducting a case

study, researchers are enabled to develop in-depth understandings of a certain

phenomenon.

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In this thesis, since the subject is co-creative labourers on Chinese social media,

moreover, co-creative labourers are classified to two types: the influential or online

celebrities and the ordinary web users. Focusing on the relationships between the two

types of co-creative labourers, to investigate whether they are differentially linked

with media companies and exploitation, a case study is deployed to have an insightful

understanding of how co-creative labourers and their labour are exploited on Chinese

Weibo and Miaopai.

The first two research questions of this thesis are settled for the case study: (1) how

do verified short video creators on Weibo and Miaopai perceive themselves in media

industries; and (2) how do media companies perceive co-creative labourers on Weibo

and Miaopai? Since to answer these questions, both qualitative data and quantitative

data such as interviews and audience’ feedback needed to evaluate product

effectiveness and efficiency, qualitative and quantitative methods are applied in the

case study.

5.2.1 Quantitative Research For the quantitative part, I observed 30 verified “short video masters” who

participated in the project launched by Weibo Corp (@WeiboVideo 2016).

When choosing the participants, two steps were taken: first, by browsing and filtering

the comments under Weibo’s post of the project, 64 people who said they want to be

verified as “short video masters” are chosen. However, since the process of

verification takes time and until March 5, only 27 of the 64 people got verified, the

second step was taken on April 5, when I added another 3 verified short video

creators into the observation. Therefore, in this study, 30 short video creators are

observed, and 30 is chosen as the sample size because it is the boundary for small and

large sample is a rule of thumb in quantitative methods (Hogg and Tanis 1977, 7e).

Here is the list of the observed short video creators, pseudonyms are adopted in order

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to protect their privacy.

@You @Yang @XiaoY @Ha @YF @Long

@Ruan @Wang @Zui @Shi @Shu @Da

@Dao @Bao @Meng @Su @Quan @JH

@Ke @Mu @Xiao @Hotlity @Yu @Zhu

@Ma @Shen @Ting @KK @Liao @Huang

Table 1 The List of the observed “short video masters”

The observation lasted from March to July. During which, I recorded (1) the number

of videos the verified short video creators posted from March to July. Since according

to Weibo Corp’s requirements, in order to get verified, a co-creative labourer needs to

post at least 5 short videos per month, by recording how many videos a verified short

video creator posts every month, the productivity or efficiency of verified co-creative

labourers is examined. (2) The growth of verified short video creators’ followers from

the end of March till July 30. (3) The average re-posts, comments and likes of their

video posts per month from February, March to July. Moreover, since Ritzer and

Jurgemsson (2010) state that in the context of Web2.0, media companies emphasize

the effectiveness of a product, and according to Fuchs (2013), traffic indicates profits

on the social media, to evaluate the effectiveness of the user generated produc, (4) the

content of their most popular videos would be also viewed.

Since in this case, Weibo Corp requires verified short video creators to make 5 videos

per month (@WeiboVideo 2016), first of all, the requirement of Weibo is introduced

as the criterion for evaluating efficiency. Then, when it comes to the other parameter:

the effectiveness of user generated content, since according to Weibo Corp’s user

report(2015) , “with more than 500 reposts, a post is viewed as influential”. In this

study, an average number of 500 reposts per month is introduced as the measurement

for the effectiveness of user generated content.

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Since by tracing the participants, quantitative data especially the productivity of

verified short video creators can be viewed, in this study, the quantitative research

provides an overview of the verified short video creators’ situation and serves as

supplements for the qualitative interviews.

5.2.2 Qualitative research Both semi-structured interviews and content analysis are conducted in the qualitative

part. To understand more detailed information about how short video creators and

media companies view co-creators on short video applications, during the research, I

interviewed 14 people in total. 12 of them are co-creative labourers who got verified

after participating in the Weibo project. The other 2 are staffs from Miaopai and Sina

Weibo.

@Xiao @Yu @Shu @Yang @Xiao @Ha

@Da @Huang @Shen @Ke @Wang @Su

Table 2 The List of the Interviewed Short Video Creators

For the verified short video creators, first, I contacted the 30 people whom I traced by

sending private messages. Before April 15, 17 of them replied me, but at last, only 13

people accepted my interviews. Moreover, since one of the 13 people skipped many

questions during the interview, only 12 people’s answers were adopted.

The interview questions were designed according to the research question. First of all,

in order to have an overview of the 12 interviewees, background information includes

age, education level are asked. Then, questions concern their short video production

includes their motivation of joining Weibo’s project, as well how they produce short

videos are asked.

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In total, thirteen questions are addressed for the interviewees: ‘(1) what’s your

motivation of creating short videos and being verified; and (2) how do you know

about the project;’ for these two questions, I aimed to understand verified short video

creators’ motivations and agencies. Then, for ‘(3) do you make videos independently;

and (4) how long will it take for you to make a video;’ these two questions were asked

to understand the short video creators’ producing efficiency. Three questions are

asked to examine the relationship between verified short video creators and media

companies, and to understand whether they are unintentionally engaged in

exploitation: ‘(5) which software do you use to make videos; (6) how do you meet the

requirements of producing 5 videos per month; (7) do you get any special services

from Weibo and Miaopai after the verification?’ (See Appendix 2)

Then, question ‘(8) do you co-operate with advertisers or other organizations when

making a video?’ was asked to explore whether verified short video creators

accumulate capital online. By asking ‘(9) do you have any plan for the future of your

video making, will you do it as part-time or full time, and (10) do you sign a contract

with Sina Weibo or Miaopai’; a in-depth sight of how verified short video creator

relate to media companies is hopefully provided. When it comes to ‘(11) do you feel

pushed to create videos after being verified; (12) what do you think is your

relationship with Weibo; and(13) what do you think is your relationship with your

audience and the unverified users, do you get money through the mode of rewards(打

赏模式) (Appendix 2)’; These questions enable me to have a better understanding of

the case when answering the first sub research question.

Two staffs from Yixia Corp and Weibo Corp accepted my interviews. The staff from

Yixia Corp is Phyllis Liu, the personal assistant of Yixia Corp’s CEO. Thanks to her,

I got acquainted with many other staffs who manage short video business in Miaopai.

However, since most of the answers given by the other Miaopai staff were overlapped

with Phyllis Liu’s answer. In this thesis, I mainly introduced Phyllis Liu’s data to help with the analysis.

51

I also did another interview with a staff from @SinaVideo(新浪视频). Similarly,

since on the one hand, I can only contacted with her through the private message on

Weibo, which means mostly, she has no time to answer my questions; on the other

hand, most of the information she told me is overlapped with Phyllis Liu’s answers,

her data was remained as a backup but will not be introduced in this study.

Therefore, a key formant interview is conducted by me with Phyllis Liu. Since when

interviewing Phyllis Liu, I would like to know how media companies perceive co-

creative labourers: do they think there is any difference between verified co-creative

labourer and ordinary web users, and would Weibo and Miaopai are encourage web

users to be productive? Four questions were addressed during the interview: ‘(1) do

you think co-creative labours are someone special or everyone can create good videos

online? (2) Do you co-operate with some verified short video creators? (3) Why do

you launch such a project, do you have any other ways to support verified short video

creators? (4) Is there any significant profit growth after supporting short video

creators? (Appendix 15)’

Besides, since in the thesis, official data as well as reports are available to help with

the analysis. In total, 2 financial reports include Weibo Corp the Second Quarter

Report 2016 (Weibo Corp 2016) and Weibo Corp the Tecond Quarter Report 2015

(Weibo Corp 2015), 1 news report (163.com 2014) and 2 press releases (Sina

&Weibo Data Center and iResearch 2016; @WeiboVideo 2016) are analyzed.

5.3 Limitations Since the research has been finished within 6 months as my master thesis, one of the

possible limitations is my accessibility to the literature. During the writing process, I

used the snowballing method to search for literatures. Starting from two articles that

are relevant to co-creative labours for example, Arvidsson and Colleoni (2012), whenever I found relative theories or citations, I would search directly in the

52

references for the scholar and his or her other works. This takes the risk that the

literatures I found will not be the latest. Also, my horizon and understandings of this

topic would be limited.

Other possible limitations may fall on my case study. First, as the project I’ve chosen

was launched in the end of March, moreover, the process of verification takes time,

the observation was quite short-term. Second, as only 12 people were interviewed by

me, it takes risk when generalizing the results to the whole group of co-creative

labourers on Weibo and Miaopai. Third, since relative studies on verified short video

creators in China are limited, a lack of theories was noticed when conducting the case

study. Considering all the limitations mentioned above, this research takes it as an

introduction for people to the studies on co-creative labour and labourers on Chinese

social media.

5.4 Ethics Before conducting the interview, all the interviewees were adequately informed of the

research purpose and the research methods. I guarantee no information of the

interviewees would be revealed for any interests and during the research, autonomy

was guaranteed for all the participants when answering the questions.

Moreover, even though most of the interviewees allowed me to present their Weibo

accounts directly. Since during the interview, some private information is concerned,

the pinyin of the first Chinese characters of the observed participants as well as

interviewees’ Weibo accounts are adopted as pseudonyms.

Besides, this research involves no controversial issues or animal experiment, the

researcher receives no funding and serves no political interest. All sources of

literature and data are given in the reference list and I guarantee this work is

independently done by me.

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Chapter 6: Analysis and Discussions

This chapter aims to analyze the collected data and answer the research questions.

The main research question of this study is “how is co-creative labour exploited on

Chinese short social media?” Three sub-questions are formulated to assist in

answering the main question, (1) how do verified short video creators on Weibo and

Miaopai perceive themselves in media industries; (2) how do media companies

perceive co-creative labourers on Weibo and Miaopai; and (3) how does capital

accumulate on Chinese short video applications?

The chapter is sectioned into two parts. As mentioned in the methodology part, since

both quantitative and qualitative researches were done in the case study, the first part

presents and analyzes the quantitative data collected from the observed short video

creators. During which, efficiency and effectiveness of the user generated short videos

are introduced as measurements for co-creative labourers’ capabilities. Then, the

second part is organised according to the three sub-questions that have been re-

addressed above. In this section, interview data as well as relevant reports and official

data will be valued.

Since the research is based on a case study of co-creative labourers on Chinese Weibo

and Miaopai, by presenting the data and results collected from the case study, and

contextualising the results with theories that have been introduced before, answers to

the main and sub-research questions will be assessed.

6.1 Information of the Observed Short Video Creators In total, 30 verified short video creators were observed in the case study (See

Appendix 1). 19 of them are male and 11 are female. Of the 30 verified short video

creators, 23 of them are funny video creators, 3 of them make make-up videos, 2 of

them are songwriters, 1 makes fan art video, 1 makes videos of film reviews.

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Since from March to July, all of the observed participants met Weibo’s requirements

of producing 5 videos per month, according to the measurement introduced in the

methodology part, all the observed participants can guarantee their product’s

efficiency and produce efficiently. Moreover, since the followers of all the

participants increasingly grew from March to July, it can be seen that to some extent,

these short video creators are becoming influential (see Appendix 1)

However, since among the 30 observed participants, only 4 of them can have an

average number of 500 reposts monthly, it can be assumed that not everyone has the

capability to produce influential content (See Appendix 1), effectiveness of a product

is harder to be achieved than efficiency.

6.2 Interview Data of the Case Study and Content Analysis of Relevant Reports. In this section, the interview data will be assessed according to concepts and

approaches presented in the theoretical framework. Since for each sub-section, the

subject of the research question changes, the centrality of different concepts and

approaches changes as well. Moreover, relevant reports as well as the official

documents would be introduced to help answer the research questions. In the end of

each sub-section, short conclusion remarks will also be addressed accordingly.

6.2.1 How Do Verified Co-creative Labourers on Weibo and Miaopai Perceive Themselves Since the first sub-question concerns the co-creative labourers’ viewpoints, the term

agency especially Kabeer’s (1999, 438) definition of agency is valued. According to

Kebeer, since agency refers to the ability of individuals to set their own goals and act

upon them(Ibid), moreover, it is closely related to an individual’s motivation, the

answers given by the interviewees for the first question, ”what is your motivation to

make short videos” are addressed.

Among the 12 interviewees, 10 of the 12 mentioned “interesting”, “for fun” or similar

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words, for example, @Xiao: ' I work for a media company in Hunan province, since my job is related to

editing videos and I am very into movies, I’ve edited some funny videos from my

perspective of some movies. Actually at the very beginning, I do it for myself, since

now the project on Weibo says it will support we short video creators, I would like to

share my works and find friends who have the same hobby with me.(Appendix 3)'

@Yu :' I’ve watched many videos of @Papi 酱 (a very famous short video creator on

Weibo who has signed with Luogic company and got more than 22million yuan of

advertising investment, and found they are very interesting, so I want to have a try,

just for fun, isn’t it funny to make hilarious videos? (Appendix 5)'

@Huang:'Recently, there are many short video creators on Weibo and Miaopai, I feel

it would be very interesting to make funny videos and leave some memories for my

youth. (Appendix 6)'

@Yang: ‘I’ve watched many videos of @Papi 酱 and found they are very interesting,

so I want to have a try, just for fun, isn’t it funny to make hilarious videos? And… of

course I also want to be an online celebrity like @papi 酱，nothing can be better to

make one’s interest as one’s career, I like funny stuff, I am a funny person, so I want

to bring happiness to other people.’

Therefore, it can be assumed that when making short videos, those verified co-

creative labourers get mental satisfactions just as Ritzer and Jurgensson (2010, 27)

state.

Then, answers for question 6 and 11 are addressed to investigate whether there is a

relationship between the agency and the product’s efficiency of co-creative labourers.

The two questions are: ‘how do you meet the requirements of producing 5 videos per month, and do you feel pushed to create videos after being verified (Appendix 2)’.

56

Since on the one hand, all of the interviewees met Weibo’s requirement of producing

5 videos per month; on the other hand, the answers given by interviewees for question

6 and 11 are generally positive and optimistic, for example:

@Xiao:' 5 videos are totally fine for me, first of all, making short videoswon’t take me

much time and energy , second, as I really enjoy make short videos, I actually make

almost 3 to 4 per week. (Appendix 3)'

@Wang: 'Since I am doing fan art, as long as my idol has some new pictures, activities

and dramas, I can keep making videos. He is my motivation, haha.(Appendix 12)'

@Shu: '5 is not that much... I am interested in it.(Appendix 7)'

It can be seen that the mental satisfactions of the interviewees, which is also part of

their motivations and agencies, helped to drive them to be productive.

Since in this research, co-creative labourers on Weibo and Miaopai are divided into 2

types: the influential and the ordinary. When it comes to how the verified short video

creators perceive their relationships with the others, first of all, the relationship

between verified short video creators and the ordinary web users should be addressed.

Therefore, answers for question 13 are applied into the analysis.

According to the interview data, since 8 of the interviewees used the word "friends" to

describe their relationships with the followers, for example:

@Xiao: (Me and my followers as well as other ordinary web users) 'are friends, as

long as they appreciate my videos, I feel grateful. (Appendix 3)'

@Yang: 'Friends... I also give them gifts. (Appendix 9)' @Wang: 'Friends, since we are all Wangkai’s fans. I have many Weibo friends, even though we haven’t meet in real life, through them I got materials like Wangkai’s

57

photos or video clips. Some of my followers are talented and good at making videos

as well, so they also inspire me. (Appendix 12)'

It can be assumed that most of the verified short video creators take the followers

equally. Moreover, since almost all the verified short video creators I observed

expressed their thankfulness and give gifts regularly to their followers, this again

reflects Ritzer and Jurgensson's (2010, 27) statement that mental satisfaction can be a

driving force for co-creative labourers to be productive.

Figure 3: To celebrate his followers hit 1 million, @Ma settled a lottery to choose

lucky audience and send them gifts.

However, since besides “friends”, 6 of the interviewees include people who

mentioned ‘friends’ as well, claimed that they are more like producer and admitted

they reposted advertisements to their followers:

@Huang: 'I hope to attract more audience, I hope to make money through short

videos. (Appendix 6)'

@Shu: ' I repost their (the advertiser's) information of activities. Also, they sometimes

support me gifts to reward my followers… I am more like a producer. (Appendix 7)’

@Shen: ‘Only one, they offer us gifts to reward our followers. We repost their

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information. (Appendix 10)’

Fuchs’ (2010) definition of the exploited class is adopted to examine the relationship

between the verified short video creators and the ordinary users in the case study.

According to Fuchs (2010), knowledge labourer includes people who don’t create

immediate product but help to sustain the environment. Since in this case, verified

short video creators can’t maintain their short video businesses without the feedback

from ordinary web users, ordinary web users can be viewed the exploited class.

Moreover, since by reposting advertising information to their followers, the verified

short video creators sell their followers’ participation as commodity to promote

advertisements’ influences, in this sense, ordinary web users are exploited by verified

short video creators.

When it comes to the relationship between verified short video creators and media

companies, first of all, since according to the data, 4 of interviewees described their

relationship with Weibo and Miaopai as collaborators, for example:

@Xiao:’I am a privileged user, but I contribute beautiful videos as well. We are

collaborators. (Appendix 3)’

@Shen: ‘Collaborators, but we are also users. (Appendix 8)’ @Yang: ‘Collaborators, and Weibo provides me many opportunities.(Appendix 9)’

@Su: ‘Collaborators, since they verified me and I have to produce 5 videos monthly.

(Appendix 14)’

It can be seen that to some co-creative labourers, the relationship between media

companies and them in like a win-win situation. Them since in this case, Weibo

provides people who get verified Fensitoutiao and membership for free, to some

59

extent, the verified short video creators in this case can be viewed as dynamic paid

labourer as no contract was signed between Weibo, Miaopai and them (See Appendix

3 to 14).

Besides, since Weibo Corp states in its Second Quarter Report in 2016 that:

‘With the developments and expansions of Weibo’s video business, Weibo finally

opens itself a new market of short videos with 60 million- 70 million potential users,

this not only helps Weibo to expand its market and seek new chance to gain

profits.(Weibo Corp, 2016)’

By encouraging verified short videos creators to be productive online (5 videos per

month), and engaging them to spend time in online content production, Weibo is the

one who ultimately owns the huge profits brought by user generated contents.

Reflecting Fuchs’ (2010, 186) definition that economic exploitation contains three

aspects: first, there must be an exploiting class deprives the other classes’ resources;

second, the ownership of the exploited class is excluded; and third, the exploiting

class would appropriate resources produced by the exploited, in this case, verified

short video creators are exploited by Weibo and Miaopai.

6.2.2 How Do Media Companies Perceive Co-creative Labourers Since in this study, product’s effectiveness and efficiency are introduced as two

parameters to evaluate co-creative labourers’ capabilities, first of all, the question of

‘effectiveness or efficiency, which is more important for media companies when

perceiving the user generated content’ will be evaluated.

Thereafter, as co-creative labourers on Weibo and Miaopai are divided into two types

in this research: the influential and the ordinary; moreover, previous part of analysis

shows that the ordinary web users are exploited by verified short video creators.

When it comes to the relationship between media companies and co-creative

labourers, ‘whether media companies perceive co-creative labourers differently’, ‘do

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media companies share different relationships with the two co-creative labourers’,

these questions will be viewed and answered.

In this section, data collected from the key formant interview, as well as relevant

reports released by Weibo and Miaopai will be introduced. Then, when talking about

the product efficiency and effectiveness, since Phyllis Liu states that:

‘Both are important for sure. But to us, since the lack of efficiency can be made up by

promotion, we care more on the effectiveness, say influence rather than efficiency of

the videos. (Appendix 15)’

Ritzer and Jurgensson’s (2010, 27) argument that in the future, companies would pay

more attention for product effectiveness rather efficiency is reflected. Moreover, as

Phyllis Liu also states that:

‘So far, there are mainly three kinds of short video and verified video creators on our

platform… those who become popular are really limited. In the very beginning, we

have @papi 酱 who helped us realize our investment was right. But then, a lot of

people who imitate @papi 酱 sprang up, and for sure, copiers can’t be as successful

as the origin…but any way, to be the next @papi 酱 is not easy. (Appendix 15)’

Regarding the four dimensions of being a successful online celebrity (Sina & Weibo

Data Center 2011), it can be seen that first, the originality of co-creative labourer is

valued most by Miaopai; second, Miaopai also feels that co-creative labourers who

maintain the capability of producing effective products are limited. Moreover, since

the statement further indicates that co-creative labourers are different in the eyes of

media companies: according to Phyllis Liu, some of the co-creative labourers are able

to produce effective contents and be influential, while others remain ordinary. When

viewing the project launched by Weibo (@WeiboVideo 2016) again, since Weibo

requires users to be productive and influential already before applying for

verifications: ‘one must produced 5 videos… and had 10,000 views the month before applying for verification (Ibid)’; instead of encouraging ordinary users to be more

61

active and influential online, this project can actually be viewed as an exam settled by

Weibo to select capable co-creative labourers who can create influential online

content.

Therefore, as Weibo and Miaopai value different types of co-creative labourers

differently, considering a set of activities hosted by Weibo and Miaopai recently, the

ways media companies engage co-creative labourers in content production are

different accordingly.

In the end of May, Weibo hosted and live-cast a ceremony to honor the online

celebrities. Since most of the influential online celebrities have their own followers,

however, many of the online celebrities appear only or never appear in their own

videos, by gathering all the influential online celebrities together, and satisfying the

curiosity of ordinary online users, the ceremony hosted by Weibo result in a win-win

situation: on the one hand, online celebrities are enabled to get more attention, on the

other hand, buzzwords or topics concern this ceremony would be viral on Weibo for

the following days . Taking Phillys Liu’s statements into consideration:

‘ if the content is popular enough, we will recommend them on the first page, also if a

person is too influential, we will also invite him/her to do a live webcast, recently, we

are focusing on live webcast. (Appendix 15)’

‘The second group is people who make fashion videos or make-up videos such as @

虫虫 Chonny, actually, models compose the majority of this group of online celebrities.

They would also take the initiatives to contact us and ask promotion. (Appendix 15)’

In the relationship between co-creative labourers and media companies, since on the

one hand, media companies are seeking way to collaborate with online celebrities and

boost traffic; on the other hand, some co-creative labourers also take initiatives in

seeking opportunities to promote their influence. Co-creative labourers are not passively engaged in content production, the relationship between verified co-creative

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labourers and media companies is more like a win-win relationship.

6.2.3 How Does Capital Accumulate on Chinese Weibo and Miaopai In this section, since the relationships between verified short video creators, ordinary

web users as well as media companies are clarified, ‘how does capital accumulate on Chinese Weibo and Miaopai’ would be investigated.

Before having a look at the capital accumulation, since profit generation can be

viewed as an outward expression of capital accumulation (Fuchs 2013), first of all,

how Miaopai and Weibo generate profits will be examined. During which, since after

the case study, Ritzer and Jurgensson’s (2010) statements were found reflecting the

profit mode of Miaopai and Weibo, by reviewing how they describe the profit

generation of media companies, the concrete ways for media companies making

money will be explained. Moreover, as some of the phenomena reflect Fuchs’

arguments as well, Fuchs’ theories on capital accumulation will also be introduced in

the analysis.

According to Ritzer and Jurgensson (2010), there are 5 ways for media companies to

generate profits. First of all, by selling information to advertises, media companies

would sign contracts with advertisers and help them promote advertisements; second,

by generating spin-offs, media companies would prolong their value chain to attract

new users; third, based on the brand value built online, media companies would try to

explore new markets in other domains; fourth, by holding back part of what can be

offered and charging for it, media companies encourage consumers to consume on the

internet; fifth, by charging for maintenance, support and additions to the basic system,

media companies would encourage people to pay for membership or other

services(29-30).

Since in this case study, item one, four and five as Ritzer and Jurgensson(2010) state are more obvious when it comes to Weibo and Miaopai. Moreover, since item four

63

and five are basically overlapped on both Weibo and Miaopai, the following part

gives explicit examples to describe how Weibo and Miaopai generate profits.

Han Kun, the CEO of Yixia Corp, states in an interview that Miaopai mainly makes

profits through advertisements (163.com 2014), therefore, the first item stated by

Ritzer and Jurgensson’s (2010), “by selling information to advertisers (29)” is

reflected.

Moreover, as Weibo Corp states in its Second Quarter Report in 2016 that:

“Weibo grows fast in commercialization as well. In the second quarter, Weibo earned 92.7 million yuan in total, and 79.1 million of the profits were contributed by

advertizing.(Weibo Corp, 2016)”

Despite Miaopai, Weibo also earns money mainly by selling information to

advertisers.

Therefore, when it comes to the concrete ways for Weibo and Miaopai to promote the

advertisements, since in nowadays, when opening Miaopai and Weibo on mobile

phones, an advertising cover picture would jump into user’ eyes and stay for 2 to 3

seconds (See Figure 4), moreover, the board of a website (Figure 5) would be placed

with advertisements. It can be assumed that the users’ online behaviours such as

browsing websites from the top are sold as information to advertisements. This is also

reflected by Fuchs’ statement that “while no product is sold to the users, the users

themselves are sold as a commodity to advertisers” (2010, 191), since Fuchs

introduced this idea when explaining capital accumulation online, the first layer of

capital accumulation is also embodied by media companies’ behaviour of selling user

generated information to advertisers.

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Figure 4 the advertisement of a South-Korean TV programme on the

cover photo of Miaopai

Figure 5 the advertisement of Tmall, Alibaba was placed at the board of Weibo

The fourth and fifth items are also obvious on both Weibo and Miaopai. Since when

opening the ‘Weibo Market’ of Weibo, some special stickers, filters are charged for

extra money, reflecting Ritzer and Jurgensson (2010, 30)’s statement that by holding

back part of what can be offered, Web2.0 companies encourage users to consume

online, Weibo generate profits by providing charging services. Therefore, in this

sense, the relationship between co-creative labourers and media companies goes back

to the traditional producer and consumer relationship. Same for the fifth item, since on

Weibo and Miaopai, an ordinary web user can get more privileges by joining the

memvership, Web2.0 sites are found charging users “for maintenance, support and

additions to the basic system” (ibid: 30).

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Figure 6 joining the membership of Weibo, a user can enjoy extra emojis as well

as decorations on one’s profile.

Therefore, from the profit mode of Weibo and Miaopai, only one layer of exploitation

can be noticed. Just as Fuchs (2013) states, by providing free services to co-creative

labourers, by attracting and encouraging more and more users to take part into content

production, the co-creative labour offered by co-creative labourers online is like free

labour for media companies, and the content and products produced by co-creative

labourers are as commodities by media companies to the advertisers.

When viewing back to the project launched by Weibo, since the more information

online, the higher the advertising rates the media companies can charge (Fuchs 2013,

191). On the one hand, by engaging more short video creators in regular content

production, certain activeness on the social media can be guaranteed; on the other

hand, since these short video creators can attract more users by their effective and

efficient products, in this case, both verified short videos and ordinary web users are

exploited by Weibo. Since the longer time these co-creative labourers spend on the

internet, the more traffic and information are gathered by Weibo, the higher the rate

of advertisements can Weibo charge, by encouraging and attracting different co-

creative labourer to stay on the internet, surplus values are created by users, Weibo

achieved its capital accumulation by exploiting the time both kinds of co-creative

labourers spend online.

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Then, when it comes to the relationship between verified short video creators and

ordinary web users, since in the case study, some of the verified short video creators

also collaborate with advertisers. By selling their followers’ information to advertisers,

and engaging their followers to spend more time and create content online, the

ordinary web users are exploited by verified short video creators, as they offer free

labour for verified short video creators as well. While in this case, it is hard to classify

verified short video creators as the capitalists, since they produce contents by

themselves. On Weibo and Miaopai, there are some co-creative labourers who become

the capitalists, for example @papi 酱. On May 25, after getting a 22 million Yuan

contract, @papi 酱 launched her private channel papitube to encourage her followers

to create videos.

Figure7 the papitube regularly post short videos done by @papi 酱’s followers

On the Papitube, all the short video are made by @papi 酱’s followers for free,

moreover, since all the video released by the name of Papitube and help increase

Papitube’s brandvalue, reflecting Fuchs’ statement that economic exploitation refers

to “the existence of an exploiting class that deprives at least one exploited class of its

resources, excludes it from ownership, and appropriates resources produced by the

exploited” (Fuchs 2010, 186), those @papi 酱’s followers are exploited by @papi 酱.

@papi 酱 can be viewed as a capitalist in some sense.

67

To sum it up, there are two groups who accumulate capital on the internet, one is

media company, the other is influential co-creative labourers who are able to exploit

their followers. Also, it is noticeable that even though by encouraging both verified

short video creators and ordinary web users to spend time and create content online,

the final aim of media companies is the same: to exploit co-creative labourers in order

to accumulate capital. The ways how media companies exploit verified short video

creators and ordinary web users are different. For media companies, verified short

video creators can be used to attract more ordinary users, and broaden their potential

market.

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Chapter 7: Conclusion and Future studies

7.1 Conclusion The main research question of this study is “how is co-creative labour exploited on

Chinese short video applications?” To answer this question, first, I reviewed and

evaluated previous researches on co-creative labourer, co-creative labour and

informational capitalism. During the process, two different schools of thoughts have

stand out: one is Marxist school which believes that exploitation is objectively existed,

according to them, the free or low-paid work offered by co-creative labourers

represents as a novel way for the capital accumulation (Fuchs 2013; Fisher 2012 ); The

other, by emphasizing the agency of co-creative labours, is partly derived from Cyber-

libertarianism and claims that the co-creative labour on Web2.0 drives the emergence

of a new capitalism (Ritzer and Jurgensson 2010).

By viewing and selecting from theories in both schools, Fuchs’ theory of exploitation

and class are employed. However, as Ritzer and Jurgensson’s emphasis on the agency

of co-creative labour is overlooked in Fuchs’ theories but is reflected in the feedback

of Weibo’s video supporting project (@WeiboVideo 2016), parts of Ritzer and

Jurgensson’s theories are also discussed and introduced to help with the analysis in

this study.

In order to have a deeper insight of the relationship between co-creative labours and

media companies as well as to what extent, co-creative labours is associated with

exploitation, a case study of short video creators on Miaopai and Weibo is conducted.

During the case study, in total, 30 verified short video creators on Weibo and Miaopai

are observed. By interviewing12 short video creators, the private assistant of

Miaopai’s CEO and a staff from Sina Weibo, the first two research questions: how do

verified short video creators perceive themselves, as well as how do media companies

perceive short video creators are examined.

69

Thereafter, based on Fuchs’ approach towards exploitation, by contextualizing the

assessed theories with the collected data, the answers to the main research question:

How is co-creative labourers exploited on Chinese social media can be answered from

following aspects:

7.1.1 Co-creative Labourers on Chinese Social Media are exploited Fuchs’ definition of exploitation (2010; 2013) has been applied in this study. Then,

when viewing the co-creative labourers on Chinese social media, since co-creative

labourers can produce information freely for media companies, moreover, this

information can be sold as commodity to advertisements. By engaging co-creative

labourers spend time online through various ways, such as encouraging them to be

verified short video creators; by depriving the surplus value created be co-creative

labourers freely during their spare time, co-creative labourers are exploited as a whole

on Chinese social media, despite whether they are verified or the ordinary.

7.1.2 Co-creative Labourers are not Passively Exploited, They Take Initiatives in the Relationship with Media Companies According to the information collected from interviewees, since the motivations of

these co-creative labourers to make videos are mainly for mental enjoyments.

Moreover, instead of being pushed by Weibo’s requirement, the verified short video

creators have the passion to create videos and interact with their followers,

considering that when the short video supporting project was first launched in the end

of March, many people applied for the verifications actively, it can be seen that short

video creators on Weibo and Miaopai are not passively engaged in video making and

media circulation.

As Phyllis Liu also state that some models would even actually contact Miaopai, it

can be seen that co-creative labourers have their own agency. Instead of being pushed by Weibo’s to meet requirement of producing videos regularly, they are taking

70

initiatives in the relationship with media companies.

7.1.3 Advertising Helps with Profit Growth, However, Audience is the Key to Long-term Profit Since in the third part of the analysis, the profit mode of Weibo and Miaopai was

discussed a little bit, when it comes to ‘how do verified co-creative labourers and

media companies make a profit’, according to the data collected from both

observation and news reports, advertisement is media companies’ dominant income.

Therefore, to make instant money, in most conditions, media companies rely on its

traffic to attract advertisers.

The same for the verified short video creators, as the case study shows some of them

sell their followers’ information to advertisers as well. It can be seen that in order to

make profits in the long-run, the key is the audience of both media companies and

verified co-creative labourers, therefore, both of them should take efforts to keep grow

their audience and maintain the activeness of the audience.

7.1.4 The Rlatioe When it comes to the relationships concern capital accumulation on Chinese social

media. Based on Fuchs’ mode of capital accumulation and the analysis which has

done above, the relationships between media companies as well as different labourers

on Chinese social media is presented as the following picture.

71

Figure 8

Therefore, three bonds are significant in it:

1. Since the popularity and activeness of users can help Weibo and Miaopai to

charge higher adveritising rates. By engaging co-creative labourers in online

content production, these labourers are exploited.

However, since Weibo and Miaopai provide not only free service, but also

platforms for users to gain information and express themselves. Since some of the

ordinary users begin to be online celebrities and get extra profits, in this sense,

even though co-creative laborers are exploited, but they are not engaged in a

passive way.

2. Effective co-creative labours as well as labourers are divided from the ordinary

users. Since some of the labourers also sell followers’ information to advertisers,

by creating contents to engage their followers, the ordinary web users are

exploited by the verified. However, since in this case, no contract is sign, it can be

assumed that being effective or ordinary is very dynamic on the social media.

3. Since by encouraging Weibo and Miaopai users to be effective and influential

online, Weibo and Miaopai are able to attract and maintain more users. By

counting on Weibo and Miaopai, those who want to be influential online can get

access to more audience and advertisers. In this sense, even though as is

mentioned above, co-creative labourers as a whole are exploited by media

companies, since some of them have the agency of being influential, the

relationship between media companies and the influential co-creative labourers is

more like a win-win relationship.

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7.2 Future Studies Since the subject of this research is pretty new, and relevant academic studies of co-

creative labourers in short video production are really limited, first of all, further

explorations on this topic are needed.

In May, there was a personal review concerning short video creators in Chinese rural

area went viral online. Criticizing people in rural area are trying to get popular by

creating uncomfortable videos, even though the article lacks convincing data, the

topic is very fascinating and could be a good start-point for relevant studies.

Moreover, during this study, since I noticed that some of the co-creative labourers

became capitalists, for example @papi 酱 who launched her own papitube and

company. Taking Fuchs’ argument that self-employed should be considered as

labourer rather than capitalist into consideration, by investigating the capital

accumulation of those kind of co-creative labourers, and examining whether they

changes their way of content production, relevant studies may bring challenges to

Fuchs’ theories.

Then, since live-cast on short video applications is becoming more and more popular,

relevant studies concerning this topic can be expected .

73

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Appendix 1 The List of The Observed Short Video Creators (pseudonyms)

M-Male F-Female

Participants Average Average Average Average Followers in

posts/month reposts comments likes March and July

(m-million)

@You – F 5 133 66 180 2129 to 20,000

@Ruan-M 7 20,000 5000 30,000 3438 to 23.4m

@Dao-M 5 32 3 63 2778 to 4301

@Ke-M 5 27 6 57 1773 to 30,000

@Ma-M 6 60,000 1,3000 140,000 2733 to 32m

@Yang-M 5 22 3 46 7378 to 70,000

@Wang-M 5 24 4 58 3392 to 20,000

@Bao-F 5 21 2 77 1233 to 4927

@Mu-F 5 42 11 89 2314 to 5729

@Shen-M 9 531 233 1304 4533 to 16,527

@XiaoY-M 6 35 14 75 1345 to 5293

@Zui-F 5 34 6 68 4302 to 7201

@Meng-F 5 21 2 47 1394 to 3402

@Xiao-F 5 33 4 53 3361 to 7783

@Ting-M 5 63 22 65 1842 to 3249

@Ha-M 5 25 3 35 3924 to 7237

@Shi-M 6 67 6 89 4434 to 10,008

@Su-F 5 32 1 38 787 to 4681

@Hotlity-F 5 58 20 66 4831 to 7782

@KK-M 5 27 4 122 2345 to 5893

@YF-M 5 48 15 84 2401 to 0283

@Shu-M 6 26 12 53 3402 to 11,219

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@Quan-F 8 22 14 26 2494 to 5837

@Yu-F 5 6 4 42 1203 to 3992

@Liao-M 7 25 14 65 1343 to 6623

@Long-M 5 15 8 32 721 to 3221

@Da-M 5 1300 280 1622 4327 to 30,000

@JH-M 5 52 8 88 2431 to 8892

@Zhu-F 5 36 12 43 1842 to 9283

@Huang-M 6 36 8 58 5304 to 13,352

Basic information:

19 of them are male and 11 are female.

23 of them are funny video creators, 3 of them make make-up videos, 2 of them

are song writers, 1 makes fan art video, 1 makes video of film reviews.

All of them were born after 1985.

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Appendix 2 Interview questions for the short video creators Appendix 2.1 : Background Information (1) How old are you?

A.14-17 B.18-23 C.24-29 D.30-35 (2) Education level?

A. High school B. Bachelor C. Master D. Phd E. None of them

Appendix 2.2 : Short video creation (1) What’s your motivation of creating short videos and being verified? (2) How do you know about the project? (3) Do you make videos independently? (4) How long will it take for you to make a video? (5) Which software do you use to make videos? (6) How do you meet the requirements of producing 5 videos per month? (7) Do you get any special services from Weibo and Miaopai after the verification? (8) Do you co-operate with advertisers or other organizations when making a video? (9) Do you have any plan for the future of your video making, will you do it as part-

time or full time? (10) Do you sign a contract with Sina Weibo or Miaopai? (11) Do you feel pushed to create videos after being verified? (12)What do you think is your relationship with Weibo and Miaoppai?

(13) What do you think is your relationship with your followers and the unverified

ordinary users? Do you get money through the mode of rewards(打赏模式)?

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Appendix 3 Interview of @Xiao, Making Video of Film Reviews Age: 24 - 29 Education level: Master 7783 followers by the end of

July Average 5 videos per month

(1) What’s your motivation of creating short videos and being verified? I work for a media company in Hunan province, since my job is related to editing

videos and I am very into movies, I’ve edited some funny videos from my perspective

of some movies. Actually at the very beginning, I do it for myself, since now the

project on Weibo says it will support we short video creators, I would like to share my

works and find friends who have the same hobby with me.

(2) How do you know about the project? The post was on the hot Weibo list and I saw it. (3) Do you make videos independently? Yes (4) How long will it take for you to make a video? I am working as a video editor, if the materials are ready, mostly it will take 5 to 6

hours for me to make a 10 minutes video.

(5) Which software do you use to make videos? Sometimes Miaopai, mostly Adobe pro. (6) How do you meet the requirements of producing 5 videos per month? I do videos about film reviews. Since new films come out every day, the materials

will always be enough.

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(7) Do you get any special services from Weibo and Miaopai after the verification? @WeiboVideo listed my account once, they also guaranteed me membership and Fensitoutiao for free. Despite that, I didn’t feel any special services were provided. (8) Do you co-operate with advertisers or other organizations when making a video? So far not, guess I am not that influential.

(9) Do you have any plan for the future of your video making, will you do it as part-

time or full time?

Part time, it is just for myself, I simply want to share some of my feelings after

watching films.

(10) Do you sign a contract with Sina Weibo or Miaopai? No (11) Do you feel pushed to create videos after being verified? 5 videos are totally fine for me, first of all, making short videoswon’t take me much

time and energy , second, as I really enjoy make short videos, I actually make almost

3 to 4 per week.

(12) What do you think is your relationship with Weibo and Miaopai? I am a privileged user, but I contribute beautiful videos as well. We are collaborators.

(13) What do you think is your relationship with your audience and the unverified

users? Do you get money through the mode of rewards(打赏模式)? We are friends, as long as they appreciate my videos, I feel grateful. Not many, but

still have.

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Appendix 4 Interview of @Da, Funny Video Creator Age: 24 - 29 Education level: Bachelor 30,000 followers by the end of

July Average 5 videos per month

(1) What’s your motivation of creating short videos and being verified? I am a humorous person, so I would like to share my funny life stories with people. I

also want to share some of my thoughts on life.

(2) How do you know about the project? The post was on the hot Weibo list. (3) Do you make videos independently? Yes (4) How long will it take for you to make a video? My videos were organized before shooting, so basically one video per week. (5) Which software do you use to make videos? Sometimes Miaopai, mostly iMovie. (6) How do you meet the requirements of producing 5 videos per month? One video per week is not very stressful. (7) Do you get any special services from Weibo and Miaopai after the verification? They offer me membership and Fensitoutiao for free. (8) Do you co-operate with advertisers or other organizations when making a video? I don’t show them in my videos, but I will repost some of their activities or

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advertisements.

(9) Do you have any plan for the future of your video making, will you do it as part-

time or full time? Part time, I love my own job. (10) Do you sign a contract with Sina Weibo or Miaopai? No (11) Do you feel pushed to create videos after being verified? Once again, 5 videos per month is not that stressful. (12) What do you think is your relationship with Weibo and Miaopai? Collaboration.

(13) What do you think is your relationship with your followers and unverified

ordinary users? Do you get money through the mode of rewards(打赏模式)? I get money, basically me and my audience are friends, but I also encourage users to

be my new followers by giving rewards.

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Appendix 5 Interview of @ Yu, Funny Video Creator Age: 24 - 29 Education level: Bachelor 3992 followers by the end of July Average 5 videos per month (1) What’s your motivation of creating short videos and being verified?

It is always wonderful when you realize there are people waiting for your videos.

@papi 酱 is my inspiration, I want to make videos and be successful like her. (2) How do you know about the project? My friend told me. (3) Do you make videos independently? Yes. (4) How long will it take for you to make a video? 4 to 5 days for one video. (5) Which software do you use to make videos? Miaopai. (6) How do you meet the requirements of producing 5 videos per month? I sometimes shoot random stuff, like my daily life. (7) Do you get any special services from Weibo and Miaopai after the verification? They offer me membership and Fensitoutiao for free. (8) Do you co-operate with advertisers or other organizations when making a video? So far not.

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(9) Do you have any plan for the future of your video making, will you do it as part-

time or full time? Part time. (10) Do you sign a contract with Sina Weibo or Miaopai? No. (11) Do you feel pushed to create videos after being verified? So far it is okay because I am having my summer vacation, but I don’t know if I can

insist since I have an important exam in the end of this year.

(12) What do you think is your relationship with Weibo and Miaopai? I am a user, but privileged.

(13) What do you think is your relationship with your followers and unverified

ordinary users? Do you get money through the mode of rewards(打赏模式)? I get money, friends. But I also hope to attract more audience, it would be good to

make money by making short videos.

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Appendix 6 Interview of @ Huang, Funny Video Creator Age: 17-23 Education level: Bachelor 13,352 followers by the end of

July Average 6 videos per month

(1) What’s your motivation of creating short videos and being verified? Recently, there are many short video creators on Weibo and Miaopai, I feel it would

be very interesting to make funny videos and leave some memories for my youth

(2) How do you know about the project? Told by friends. (3) Do you make videos independently? Yes. (4) How long will it take for you to make a video? 4 to 5 days for one video. (5) Which software do you use to make videos? Miaopai. (6) How do you meet the requirements of producing 5 videos per month? My videos are mainly funny things in real life, so I can shoot them at any place. (7) Do you get any special services from Weibo and Miaopai after the verification? They offer me membership and Fensitoutiao for free. (8) Do you co-operate with advertisers or other organizations when making a video? So far not.

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(9) Do you have any plan for the future of your video making, will you do it as part-

time or full time? Part time. (10) Do you sign a contract with Sina Weibo or Miaopai? No. (11) Do you feel pushed to create videos after being verified? So far it is fine, since they didn’t require what kind of video to post, sometimes when

I feel lazy, I just do a live webcast and post it.

(12) What do you think is your relationship with Weibo and Miaopai? I am Weibo’s user.

(13) What do you think is your relationship with your followers and unverified

ordinary users? Do you get money through the mode of rewards(打赏模式)? I get money, friends. But I hope to attract more audience, I hope to make money

through short videos production.

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Appendix 7 Interview of @ Shu, Funny Video Creator Age: 24-29 Education level: Bachelor 11,219 followers by the end of

July Average 6 videos per month

(1)What’s your motivation of creating short videos and being verified? Just for fun, no special purpose. (2)How do you know about the project? On the hot Weibo list. (3)Do you make videos independently? Yes. (4)How long will it take for you to make a video? 4 days or 5 days per video.

(5)Which software do you use to make

videos? iMovie, sometimes Miaopai.

(6)How do you meet the requirements of producing 5 videos per month? 5 is not that much, and they didn’t require what kind of video should I make. (7)Do you get any special services from Weibo and Miaopai after the verification? Yes, free membership and Fensitoutiao. (8)Do you co-operate with advertisers or other organizations when making a video? Yes, I repost their information of activities. Also, they sometimes support me gifts to reward my followers.

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(9)Do you have any plan for the future of your video making, will you do it as part-

time or full time? Part-time, but if it goes well, I will consider to take it seriously. (10)Do you sign a contract with Sina Weibo or Miaopai? No (11)Do you feel pushed to create videos after being verified? Not yet, I am interested in it. (12)What do you think is your relationship with Weibo and Miaopai? I am a user, but it provides me a platform to access to more people.

(13)What do you think is your relationship with your followers and unverified

ordinary users? Do you get money through the mode of rewards(打赏模式)? Yes, I have no idea, maybe friends, but not 100% friends. I am more like a producer.

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Appendix 8 Interview of @ Shen, Funny Video Creator Age: 24-29 Education level: Master 16,527 followers by the end of

July Average 9 videos per month

(1)What’s your motivation of creating short videos and being verified? We make funny videos to amuse people. (2)How do you know about the project? @WeiboVideo. (3)Do you make videos independently? No, we are 3 master students, and we are classmates and roommates. (4)How long will it take for you to make a video? 1 or 2 hours.

(5)Which software do you use to make

videos? iMovie or Adobe pro.

(6)How do you meet the requirements of producing 5 videos per month? We have 3 people, so we are very efficient. (7)Do you get any special services from Weibo and Miaopai after the verification? Yes, free membership and Fensitoutiao. Also, I heard we were recommended in the

recommending list.

(8)Do you co-operate with advertisers or other organizations when making a video? Only one, they offer us gifts to reward our followers. We repost their information.

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(9)Do you have any plan for the future of your video making, will you do it as part-

time or full time? Part-time, we are students. (10)Do you sign a contract with Sina Weibo or Miaopai? No. (11)Do you feel pushed to create videos after being verified? Not really, we have 3 people. (12)What do you think is your relationship with Weibo and Miaopai? Collaborators, but we are also users.

(13)What do you think is your relationship with your followers and unverified

ordinary users? Do you get money through the mode of rewards(打赏模式)? Posters and audience. Yes, but not that much, so we never counted that in.

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Appendix 9 Interview of @ Yang, Funny Video Creator Age: 18-23 Education level: Bachelor 70,000 followers by the end of

July Average 9 videos per month

(1)What’s your motivation of creating short videos and being verified?

I’ve watched many videos of @Papi 酱 and found they are very interesting, so I want

to have a try, just for fun, isn’t it funny to make hilarious videos? And… of course I

also want to be an online celebrity like @papi 酱，nothing can be better to make one’s

interest as one’s career, I like funny stuff, I am a funny person, so I want to bring

happiness to other people.

(2)How do you know about the project? On the hot Weibo List. (3)Do you make videos independently? Yes (4)How long will it take for you to make a video? 3 to 4 hours. (5)Which software do you use to make videos? Miaopai. (6)How do you meet the requirements of producing 5 videos per month? I shoot videos about my funny life stories randomly. (7)Do you get any special services from Weibo and Miaopai after the verification?

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Yes, Fensitoutiao and membership for free. (8)Do you co-operate with advertisers or other organizations when making a video? Yes, I signed a contract to promote their activities.

(9)Do you have any plan for the future of your video making, will you do it as part-

time or full time? Right now I am a university student, I will seek a job first then consider other stuff. (10)Do you sign a contract with Sina Weibo or Miaopai? No. (11)Do you feel pushed to create videos after being verified? 5 per month isn’t that much, also, since I like to record my life, sometimes I may film

much more that requirements.

(12)What do you think is your relationship with Weibo and Miaopai? Collaborators, and Weibo provides me many opportunities.

(13)What do you think is your relationship with your followers and unverified

ordinary users? Do you get money through the mode of rewards(打赏模式)? Friends. Yes, but I also give them gifts.

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Appendix 10 Interview of @Ke, Funny Video Creator Age: 21-23 Education level: Master 30,000 followers by the end of

July Average 5 videos per month

(1)What’s your motivation of creating short videos and being verified? It is interesting to share your life with strangers and make new friends. (2)How do you know about the project? On the hot Weibo list. (3)Do you make videos independently? Yes. (4)How long will it take for you to make a video? 4 to 5 days, I don’t have that much time.

(5)Which software do you use to make

videos? iMovie and Miaopai.

(6)How do you meet the requirements of producing 5 videos per month? So far it is okay, I am a student and now is my summer vacation. (7)Do you get any special services from Weibo and Miaopai after the verification? Yes, free membership and Fensitoutiao as they promised. (8)Do you co-operate with advertisers or other organizations when making a video? So far, no.

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(9)Do you have any plan for the future of your video making, will you do it as part-

time or full time? Part-time, network is not my real life. (10)Do you sign a contract with Sina Weibo or Miaopai? No. (11)Do you feel pushed to create videos after being verified? Not really, 5 videos are fine for me, they didn’t require us the duration and quality of

a video.

(12)What do you think is your relationship with Weibo and Miaopai? I am a user and that is it.

(13)What do you think is your relationship with your followers and unverified

ordinary users? Do you get money through the mode of rewards(打赏模式)? Just video creator and audience. They reward me money, but not much, guess my

videos are not that attractive.

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Appendix 11 Interview of @ Xiao-Y, Funny Video Creator Age: 24-29 Education level: Phd 7,789 followers by the end of

July Average 5 videos per month

(1)What’s your motivation of creating short videos and being verified? I want to be a famous Weibo poster. (2)How do you know about the project? The post of @WeiboVideo. (3)Do you make videos independently? No, me and my brother. (4)How long will it take for you to make a video? 3 days. (5)Which software do you use to make videos? Mainly Miaopai. (6)How do you meet the requirements of producing 5 videos per month? 5 is fine, if they require more, I am afraid I can’t make it.

(7)Do you get any special services from Weibo and Miaopai after the

verification? Fensitoutiao and membership only.

(8)Do you co-operate with advertisers or other organizations when making a video? No, we are not that influential yet.

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(9)Do you have any plan for the future of your video making, will you do it as part-

time or full time? Part-time, me and my brother are Phd student, we want to be lecturer in the future. (10)Do you sign a contract with Sina Weibo or Miaopai? No. (11)Do you feel pushed to create videos after being verified? Not yet, so far it is fine. (12)What do you think is your relationship with Weibo and Miaopai? Service provider and user.

(13)What do you think is your relationship with your followers and unverified

ordinary users? Do you get money through the mode of rewards(打赏模式)? Friends? But we are also like producer and audience. Not that much, just a little bit,

but all the money we got from the followers, we will give them back by giving small

gifts.

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Appendix 12 Interview of @ Wang, Fan Art Video Creator Age: 18-23 Education level: Bachelor 20,000 followers by the end of

July Average 5 videos per month

(1)What’s your motivation of creating short videos and being verified? I do it for fun, I am a fan of Kai Wang (a Chinese actor) and I have many friends

online who likes him, I do this just to kill my boring time and for my idol.

(2)How do you know about the project? Told by my followers, they left comments. (3)Do you make videos independently? Yes. (4)How long will it take for you to make a video? 3 to 4 days, since I am a student, I make videos only in the spare time.

(5)Which software do you use to make

videos? iMovie, Aijianji and Miaopai.

(6)How do you meet the requirements of producing 5 videos per month? As long as my idol has activities, I have materials, he is very popular now, haha, so I

am productive during the summer holidays.

(7)Do you get any special services from Weibo and Miaopai after the verification?

Fensitoutiao as I noticed. My followers charged for my membership before, so I don’t

know if the membership charged by my followers or provided by Miaopai.

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(8)Do you co-operate with advertisers or other organizations when making a video? No, I do it for Wang Kai’s fans.

(9)Do you have any plan for the future of your video making, will you do it as part-

time or full time? Part-time. (10)Do you sign a contract with Sina Weibo or Miaopai? No. (11)Do you feel pushed to create videos after being verified? Since I am doing fan art, as long as my idol has some new pictures, activities and

dramas, I can keep making videos. He is my motivation, haha.

(12)What do you think is your relationship with Weibo and Miaopai? Service provider and user.

(14)What do you think is your relationship with your followers and unverified

ordinary users? Do you get money through the mode of rewards(打赏模式)? Friends, since we are all Wangkai’s fans. I have many Weibo friends, even though we

haven’t meet in real life, through them I got materials like Wangkai’s photos or video

clips. Some of my followers are talented and good at making videos as well, so they

also inspire me.

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Appendix 13 Interview of @ Ha, Funny Video Creator Age: 14-17 Education level: High school

7,237 followers by the end of

July Average 5 videos per month

(1)What’s your motivation of creating short videos and being verified? I just finished my high school and waiting for university admissions. My mom told

me to have a try, since being a short video creator online has been very popular.

(2)How do you know about the project? My friend @ me under the post posted by @WeiboVideo. (3)Do you make videos independently? Yes. (4)How long will it take for you to make a video? 2 or 3 days since I am quite free now. (5)Which software do you use to make videos? Miaopai. (6)How do you meet the requirements of producing 5 videos per month? I shoot my daily life, since my life is very interesting, it is not that hard to meet the

requirements.

(7)Do you get any special services from Weibo and Miaopai after the

verification? Fensitoutiao and the membership for free.

(8)Do you co-operate with advertisers or other organizations when making a video? 105

No, I am not that influential yet.

(9)Do you have any plan for the future of your video making, will you do it as part-

time or full time?

Part-time, however, since I hope to study media, maybe someday I will take this as

my career.

(10)Do you sign a contract with Sina Weibo or Miaopai? No, but consider the verification, to some extent, yes. (11)Do you feel pushed to create videos after being verified? Not yet, 5 videos per month is not that much for a high school graduate, haha. (12)What do you think is your relationship with Weibo and Miaopai? I am using Weibo, so I am a user.

(13)What do you think is your relationship with your followers and unverified

ordinary users? Do you get money through the mode of rewards(打赏模式)? Video producer and audience, not yet, I only got 10 Yuan for these 3 months.

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Appendix 14 Interview of @ Su, Make-up Video Creator Age: 17-23 Education level: Bachelor 4,681 followers by the end of

July Average 5 videos per month

(1)What’s your motivation of creating short videos and being verified? I like make-up, so I do it for fun. (2)How do you know about the project? On the hot Weibo list, everyone is talking about it, as if being a online celebrity

becomes quite easy.

(3)Do you make videos independently? Yes, I also make up for myself. (4)How long will it take for you to make a video? A week. (5)Which software do you use to make videos? My phone and Miaopai. Miaopai is becoming better and better, I don't need to open

my computer to edit a video.

(6)How do you meet the requirements of producing 5 videos per month? I sometimes cut some funny moments to make up for it.

(7)Do you get any special services from Weibo and Miaopai after the

verification? Fensitoutiao and membership.

(8)Do you co-operate with advertisers or other organizations when making a video? 107

No, no advertiser contacts me, guess I am not that influential.

(9)Do you have any plan for the future of your video making, will you do it as part-

time or full time? Part-time, even though I want to be a full-time video poster as @Pony. (10)Do you sign a contract with Sina Weibo or Miaopai? No. (11)Do you feel pushed to create videos after being verified? Not yet, but maybe later since now is my summer vacation. (12)What do you think is your relationship with Weibo and Miaopai? Collaborators, since they verified me and I have to produce 5 videos monthly.

(13)What do you think is your relationship with your followers and unverified

ordinary users? Do you get money through the mode of rewards(打赏模式)? Content producer and audience, make-up really needs skills. Yes, but not much since

my followers are limited.

.

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Appendix 15 High-lighted answers given by Phyllis Liu

Note: Since the interviews were done on Wechat through voice message, I recorded

some of the most relevant and useful information for the study.

Q1: What relationship do you share with Sina Weibo? A: We are simply partners and we are independent from each other… All the video

related technologies on Weibo are provided by our company.

Q2: Does your company participate in the short video supporting project? A: It was Weibo who initiated it. Even though we don’t directly participate in it, since

all the videos posted on Weibo will be uploaded on our application, moreover, to pay

for videos, Weibo users should pay money though our platform, it is better to say we

are in it.

Q3: What kind of videos do you have on your platform?

A: So far, there are mainly three kinds of short video and verified video creators on

our platform, the first is people who make funny videos about their daily life.

However, those who become popular are really limited.In the very beginning, we

have @papi 酱 who helped us realize our investment was tight. But then, a lot of

people who imitate @papi 酱 sprang up, and for sure, copiers can’t be as successful

as the origin.

The second group is people who make fashion videos or make-up videos such as @虫

虫 Chonny, actually, models compose the majority of this group of online celebrities.

They would also take the initiatives to contact us and ask promotion.

The third group is mainly fan arts, by editing interesting videos about their idols, this

group is growing, but still, only a few them can really meet the fans’ taste and be popular.

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Recently, short video creators such as @谷阿莫 who reinterpret movies is gaining

more and more attention from both the audience and us as well… as long as the

content is attractive enough, or at least the video creator is good looking enough, I

think it is quite easy to be welcomed nowdays… but any way, to be the next @papi 酱

is not easy. Q4: Efficiency or effectiveness of short videos, which is more important for you? A: Both are important for sure. But to us, since the lack of efficiency can be made up

by promotion, we care more on the effectiveness, say influence rather than efficiency

of the videos.

Q5: Do you sign contract with verified short video creators? Will you choose

someone special to promote on your application?

A: We don’t sign any contracts with short video creator, in fact, many co-creative

labours would actively contact us, especially models…We don’t specifically promote

co-creative labours, but if the content is popular enough, we will recommend them on

the first page, also if a person is too influential, we will also invite him/her to do a live

webcast, recently, we are focusing on live webcast.

Q6: What’s your future plan about short video industries? A: Since the activeness of short video creators as well as the traffic on our platform

raised several international companies such as YG entertainment’s attention, we are

going to make our platform more dynamic. But first of all, we would focus on our

business of live webcast since it has a very promising future.

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