China's New Businesswomen: Authors, Bloggers and Celebrities as Cultural Entrepreneurs in Post-Deng China
Type
conference paper
Date Issued
2016-08-25
Author(s)
Abstract
This paper sets out to examine how China’s new cultural entrepreneurs—writers, bloggers, Internet authors and artists—use social media for marketing, self-fashioning and communicating with their target audiences. China’s Internet population reached 668 million netizens in June 2015 with a 49% penetration rate (CNNIC 2015), providing Chinese citizens with new avenues to communicate through non-official channels. This study examines how bestselling authors—such as Han Han and Guo Jingming—use social media to invent themselves as ‘consumption celebrities’—in Guy Debord’s (1992) sense of the word—whose personae epitomise the many facets of consumer culture. The new writers—including Mian Mian, Chun Shu and Muzi Mei—use blogs and microblogs including Weibo and We Chat to inform their fan base of their latest activities. Guangzhou journalist Muzi Mei for example first made blogging popular in 2003 by publishing her notorious intimate diary online. She today uses social media to make a living for herself by dispensing advice on love and sex through an online advice column. This study analyses first, how China’s cybersphere produces a new type of celebrity; and second, how online writings create a media spectacle. This media spectacle exists on three levels: first, as the public spectacle of literary or artistic self-fashioning, casting the new writer as a media celebrity; second, as a literary reflection on the economic reforms and globalisation; and third, as the epitome of the social rise of China’s new cultural entrepreneurs. This research will shed new light on China’s changing cultural scene in the era of global media. This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of the cultural and social negotiations surrounding cultural entrepreneurs in China’s new mediasphere.
Language
English
Keywords
Social media
cultural entrepreneurs
consumerism
celebrity
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
HSG Profile Area
SHSS - Kulturen, Institutionen, Maerkte (KIM)
Event Title
European Association for Chinese Studies (EACS) 21st Biennial Conference
Event Location
St. Petersburg, RUS
Event Date
21.-28.08.2016
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
249806
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
restricted
Name
2 BERG Talk EACS 20160825.pdf
Size
21.7 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
4ce73e0b7bed89414fe4ad1429fd9c0a