‘Global social media practice: case study China’

It seems China operates on a different world sometimes – which I suppose is true of everything foreign – but there is a certain similarity in their conspicuous consumerist culture.  I myself went through an online shopping phase which could have rivalled Alibaba’s single’s day. I think this online shopping aspect of Chinese social media is what intrigues me the most because it is just slightly an example of augmented reality. It is also so similar and just a bit different to what happens here.

I’d like to contrast two occurrences happening here and in China regarding online shopping. These are the western ‘haul’ video and China’s often disparaging ‘product review’ videos. Of course, we have product review videos here as well – and from what we have heard this week I presume China might have its own version of the ‘haul’ video – but what I’d like to talk about is how the differences in the social media landscapes effect each of the videos content.

The ‘haul’ is a shocker of a video category and I can entirely understand its appeal. Haul videos entail mostly teenage girls sitting on their beds revealing to a webcam their latest clothing and beauty purchases. There’s something covetously satisfying about it; and really, it’s exactly how I show everything to mum every time I myself get home from the shops. However, something to note is how only positive things are being said in the videos. The girls often haven’t used the products yet and consumers always want to like what they have spent money on. And on top of that – the most successful girls are often being paid for what they promote.

This is in contrast to the Chinese blogger and video star Laoluo who often reviews ‘defective products and technology’. There is a ‘remarkably vocal group of consumer advocates who don’t hesitate to condemn products they consider shoddy or substandard’ (Chiu, Lin & Silverman, 2012). Most of the successful ‘haulers’ and product reviewers here aren’t able be so disparaging because they are being sponsored or are holding out in the hope of being sponsored. This isn’t the aim of the Chinese product reviewers.

We here in the west honestly seem mostly okay with YouTubers being a conduit for advertiser’s messages – but the Chinese population has a lack of ‘trust in formal institutions’, they are ‘skeptical of information from news sources and advertising’ (Chiu, Lin & Silverman, 2012). This leads to social media having ‘a greater influence on purchasing decisions for consumers in China than for those anywhere else in the world’ because they ‘prize peer-to-peer recommendations’ (Chiu, Lin & Silverman, 2012).

Chinese product reviewers might be censored and restricted by their own government; but it seems western user-producers are hobbling themselves becoming beholden to a different sort of authority – large corporations.

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