How Are Co-Creative Labourers Exploited on Chinese Social Media

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

Abstract

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

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.

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

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

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

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

7 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

8 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

9 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

10 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.

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

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). 13

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 14 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

15 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 16 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 17 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

18 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.

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.

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

21 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 22 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.

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). 24

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

26 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

27 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.

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).

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;

31 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),

36 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.

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

38 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.

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 40 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

41 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 42 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 43 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 44 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 & 45

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.

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.

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 48 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 55 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

58 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 60 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 62 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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 .

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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

82 @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.

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)?

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.

(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?

(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.

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 87 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?

(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.

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. 89

(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.

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. 91

(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.

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. 93

(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?

(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.

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. 95

(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.

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? 97

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.

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.

(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. 109

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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