Is Social Media Really Media? A Discussion of China’s Weibo Reporting
Social media in China — especially weibo — is huge, and much has been said about its ability to replace or at least augment traditional media. In yesterday’s China Youth Daily, Cao Lin wrote a piece about social media that I think is worth exploring further, even though I don’t personally agree with it.
Cao begins by sharing a saying that has been passed around on weibo, explaining how influential a “media outlet” you are based on how many followers you have on weibo:
中国におけるソーシャルメディア、特にweiboは巨大で、既存のメディアに取って代わる、または少なくとも補完する存在になりつつあると言われてきた。昨日のChina Youth DailyでCao Linはソーシャルメディアについて取り上げた記事は、個人的には同意できないが可能性を追求する価値はある。
Caoはweiboがどれだけ影響力を持った「メディアアウトレット」であるか、フォロワーの数によっての影響力を表す例えを引用してこう始める。
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中国のソーシャルメディア、特にウェイボー、は非常に規模が大きいし、伝統的なメディアに取って代わるとか少なくとも補足する存在になる力があるというのはよく言われている。昨日のChina Youth Dailyの紙面で、Cao Lin氏はソーシャルメディアについての記事を書いていたが、私は個人的には賛成出来ないものの、もっと深く検証する価値があると思う。
Cao氏はウェイボーで伝えられている発言について言及し、ウェイボーでフォーローする人の数によって”メディア・アウトレット”がどれだけ影響を与えるかと説明している。
When you have more than 100 followers, you’re a company newsletter. When you have more than a 1,000, you’re a bulletin board. When you have more than 10,000, you’re a magazine. When you have more than 100,000, you’re a city newspaper. When you have more than 1,000,000, you’re a TV station. When you have more than 10,000,000, you’re a provincial satellite station. When you have more than 100,000,000, you’re CCTV.
Sounds pretty cool, right? But, Cao writes,
I must throw cold water on this idea; “self-media” is a concept that has been greatly exaggerated. No matter how omnipotent weibo is, how powerful the internet is, or how active social networks are, personal accounts are still just a space for interpersonal communication, and they can’t serve as a kind of media.
Cao argues that while weibo is great for distributing information, the veracity of that information is ultimately usually confirmed by traditional print and TV media outlets, not by weibo users. Here, I tend to agree with Cao, although there are many examples of information transmitted via weibo that comes along with enough confirmation to satisfy most weibo users (generally in the form of photos). Moreover, in China’s atmosphere of controlled media reporting, there are instances when the average weibo user probably considers weibo “reporters” more reliable than any traditional media outlets simply because the collective output of weibo is far too big to be as tightly controlled as the output of official media.
But then Cao goes on to argue that social media can’t be real media because while actress Yao Chen’s weibo account is popular, nobody is going to load her weibo to find the answers to questions like “Did Mo Yan win a Nobel Prize?” This is a bit of a red herring; certainly no one would expect Yao Chen to be a great source for that kind of question, but Cao is fooling himself if he thinks that thousands of weibo users don’t load their weibo accounts and search for the answers to questions like that every day.
“Anyone can transmit information,” Cao writes, “but to become ‘media’ you must collect, confirm, and transmit information and win the trust of the public.” Indeed, but aren’t those things weibo users can also do? Certainly, the average weibo rumor hasn’t been properly reported by any of the people passing it along. But there are plenty of weibo users, and users of other kinds of Chinese social media, that collect information, conduct interviews, and confirm stories before posting them (see, for example, Youku’s paike community).
And as far as trust goes, there are certainly some social media power users whose word is considered quite trustworthy, just as there are some traditional media outlets who are not considered trustworthy at all (ahem).
Cao’s argument ultimately boils down to a kind of elitism — I can report the news because I have training and a newspaper; you can’t because you just have the internet. Social media like weibo is just a platform for entertainment, interaction, and scattered [information]; it has no power to produce news,” he writes. And while it’s undeniable that journalistic training of one sort or another helps produce more professional reporting, the basics of reporting — discovering, confirming, and sharing a story — are something that anyone can do if they set their mind to it.
This is not to say that social media will replace traditional media; that’s obviously not the case and Cao is right to criticize those weibo users who expect to replace newspapers. Nor is it true that the average information on weibo is as reliable as what’s in Southern Weekend. But weibo and other social media are simply publication platforms; they are just as capable of distributing real reporting as any other platform. Similarly, print publications and television are also just platforms, and just as capable of distributing crap journalism as weibo or any other internet technology.
Most weibo users aren’t any kind of media, and they’re not trying to be. But to suggest that no one on weibo — including the many professional reporters who post exclusive content there — is doing real reporting just because Yao Chen isn’t a great source for political news is ridiculous. And to suggest that the platform itself isn’t suited to being “real” media simply doesn’t make sense. Any platform that allows you to type words and share them with others can be a ‘media outlet’ of sorts with the right person doing the typing.
共用できるプラットフォームは正しい人が情報を発信していれば”メディアアウトレット”になる可能性がある。
