Is Social Media a Fortune Or Misfortune? —The Art Film’S Dilemma and Breakthrough
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Department of Informatics and Media Master Programme in Social Sciences, specialization Digital Media and Society One-year Master’s Thesis Is social media a fortune or misfortune? —The art film’s dilemma and breakthrough. Student: Li Yijia Supervisor: Maria Nilsson June 2018 !1 Abstract In China, Weibo is a social software that almost everyone uses. Weibo does not only provide an arena for users to share their experiences with friends, but also offers a platform for companies to promote their products. From 2014, the distributors of the films began to use Weibo as one of their main marketing tools. Nevertheless, from the same time, Chinese art films have begun to decline, and the most direct manifestation is the downturn in the box office. At the coincidence of the two time points, the decline of art films and the Weibo seems to be linked. However, there are still a handful of art films which achieved great success on Weibo in this 3-year period. In these cases, Weibo seems to be a fortune for these art films. The first part of this study is devoted to exploring what has changed in the ways to Weibo users’ get information and communicate about films, especially art films from 2014 to 2017 by social media logic. The second part analyzes a successful case and tries to find out how the distributors of the art films could use Weibo as an online marketing tool to conduct online marketing activities by combing the social media logic with the marketing strategy for non-mainstream culture products. This study used a combination of qualitative research and quantitative research. After analyzing the collected data, it is indicated that during the three years, Weibo users have changed a lot in obtaining movie information and communicating art movies which might have an impact on Weibo users discussing about art films and purchasing tickets. Weibo can also be utilized by art films distributors using idiosyncratic marketing approach than ordinary method to attract audience's attention. Key words: Social media, Art film, Online marketing !2 Table of contents Abstract .....................................................................................................................................2 Table of contents ......................................................................................................................3 Lists of Tables and Figures .......................................................................................................5 1. Introduction........................................................................................................................... 6 1.1 Introduction..................................................................................................................... 6 1.2 Contribution and research questions ...............................................................................7 1.3 Definitions ......................................................................................................................8 2. Background ...........................................................................................................................9 2.1 The history of Chinese art movies ...............................................................................10 2.2 The decline of Chinese art films from 2014 .................................................................10 2.3 Weibo has been used from 2014 ...................................................................................11 2.4 Weibo functions ...........................................................................................................12 3. Literature Review ...............................................................................................................13 3.1 Weibo has led the changes in the film marketing ........................................................13 3.2 Word of mouth marketing and fan economy ................................................................14 3.3 The impact of social media on people’s choice and attitude ........................................15 4. Theoretical Framework .....................................................................................................15 4.1 The social media logic .................................................................................................16 4.1.1 Programmability ..............................................................................................................................16 4.1.2 Popularity .........................................................................................................................................16 4.1.3 Connectivity .....................................................................................................................................17 4.1.4 Datafication ......................................................................................................................................17 4.2 Marketing strategy for non-mainstream cultural products ..........................................17 4.2.1 Find the specific customer groups ....................................................................................................18 4.2.2 Use a variety of channels to communicate with customers groups ..................................................19 4.2.3 Expand the groups and penetrate more customers groups ................................................................19 4.2.4 Make the additional profit .................................................................................................................19 5 Study Design and Methodology: .........................................................................................20 5.1 The selection of the methods ........................................................................................20 5.2 The pilot interview ........................................................................................................20 5.3 Data selection................................................................................................................ 21 5.3.1 Online questionnaire ........................................................................................................................21 5.3.2 Case study .........................................................................................................................................22 5.3.3 Qualitative content analysis ..............................................................................................................22 5.4 The embedment of study in methodological literature ................................................23 !3 5.5 Limitation .....................................................................................................................23 5.6 Ethical issues ................................................................................................................24 6 Analysis 1: How did the ways of Weibo users to get information and communicate about films change, especially art films from 2014 to 2017? ....................................................................24 6.1 Connectivity ..................................................................................................................24 6.2 Programmability ..........................................................................................................27 6.3 Popularity ......................................................................................................................28 6.4 Datafication .................................................................................................................. 30 7 Analysis 2: How could Weibo be used as a marketing tool for online marketing of art films? 31 7.1 “The Dead End” and “Sunspot” ...................................................................................31 7.2 Description of data ........................................................................................................32 7.3 Identify the first target customer group ........................................................................34 7.4 Find an appropriate way to communicate with the target group ..................................35 7.4.1 Reposting Weibo from actors and original writer ............................................................................36 7.4.2 Posting original Weibo ......................................................................................................................36 7.5 Communicate with the target group ............................................................................37 7.5.1 Open questions and interactive games get more comments .............................................................37 7.5.2 The extension of the movie gain a lot of reposting ...........................................................................39 7.5.3 Movie posters get a lot of likes .........................................................................................................40 7.6 Penetrate more Weibo users and make additional profit ..............................................41 7.6.1 Keep in touch with the target group ..................................................................................................42 7.6.2 Penetrate more ordinary users ..........................................................................................................43 7.6.3 Make the additional profit .................................................................................................................44