In China, You Can Go To College To Become a Social Media Influencer (pandaily.com) 35
An anonymous reader shares a report: As colleges around China approach their final few weeks before the winter break, frequent users of Douyin (TikTok's Chinese version) may have noticed a new type of post in their feeds: students asking for likes and followers to pass their final exams. Xu Maomao, for example, posted a video hash-tagged "SOS," where she pled for 10,000 followers in order to complete a course called "Self-Made Media Content Creation and Operation" that she is taking at the Communication University of Zhejiang (CUZ). "I am now an ordinary college student forced to become a social media influencer," joked Xu Maomao. As influencers in Europe struggle to balance the weight of selling a brand and remaining âoeauthenticâ to their followers, their Chinese counterparts are taking college courses that will help them secure a career path towards the lucrative profession of social media influencers.
From China's e-commerce hub Hangzhou, to the inland agricultural base of Henan Province, and even in far-off Tibet, vocational colleges across China are training young people to become professional influencers. Semesters are now spent on entry-level courses on topics such as short-video editing, social media marketing, e-commerce, and other aspects of the new "trade," and are often taught in cooperation with industry players such as the social media platforms themselves. By offering these courses, the Chinese higher education system is now part of the driving force for the professionalization of Chinese social media influencers and is producing a large talent pool that is now pouring into the country's flourishing digital economy. By December 16, two days before the deadline, Xu Maomao was still half way to go towards the goal of 10,000 followers. Her course instructor eventually agreed that anyone with 5,000 followers could get a 90 for the final exam, perhaps because too few had achieved the original target.
From China's e-commerce hub Hangzhou, to the inland agricultural base of Henan Province, and even in far-off Tibet, vocational colleges across China are training young people to become professional influencers. Semesters are now spent on entry-level courses on topics such as short-video editing, social media marketing, e-commerce, and other aspects of the new "trade," and are often taught in cooperation with industry players such as the social media platforms themselves. By offering these courses, the Chinese higher education system is now part of the driving force for the professionalization of Chinese social media influencers and is producing a large talent pool that is now pouring into the country's flourishing digital economy. By December 16, two days before the deadline, Xu Maomao was still half way to go towards the goal of 10,000 followers. Her course instructor eventually agreed that anyone with 5,000 followers could get a 90 for the final exam, perhaps because too few had achieved the original target.
AKA marketing major (Score:4, Interesting)
There is now no longer any difference especially given that more traditional forms of marketing e.g. print advertising aren't what they used to be. If there is a difference, social media has the capability of tracking what the viewer does which leads to viewing marketing dollars with a more jaundiced eye.
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Marketing crossed with acting, but yeah not a big deal.
Or, the start of the downfall of their civilization. Time will tell.
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Right, people need to get over the fact that Social Media exists and people have real jobs doing it. This shouldn't be that surprising at this point. It's like people being surprised that people have jobs making video games or movies.
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I think the issue is there is a disconnect within colleges and universities, especially with the Undergrad programs.
Universities teach, because they want to educate people on the topic, with hopes that the students would be interested in it an go further in their education, to learn more about it. This is a perfectly acceptable path to take, spending your life being paid off of grant money to look into details onto something, perhaps coming with some useful tidbit that say an engineer can pick up and turn
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Well, we're not surprised people have jobs making movies and games, that's always been the case.
What people are still amazed are there are real jobs for people playingvideo games. I don't think there's many jobs for people who watch movies, other than reviewers, but that's abou
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Dang, I was certain that California would be the first place where this major would be offered.
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Came here to say the same thing. We have this periodically in the UK, some newspaper prints an article about how you can get a degree in bagpipes or something. Well, no, you can get a degree in music theory with your practical part done by mastering the bagpipes.
What this tells us is that companies in China want to hire people who have studied how to influence social media, because they see it as a valuable tool. I see another government crackdown coming.
No, government propagandist (Score:2)
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So what? You inhabit a framework. Work within it.
I would suggest, for instance, that marketing American values might be less driven by governmental forces, but nearly as corrosive.
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This sounds like a really useful degree compared to, say, Philosophy or Art History.
Both of which are taught almost everywhere but aren't making any headlines.
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What you are talking about is a major in advertising. Marketing is a bit different while the actual work is often merged into one area.
Marketing is finding the audience who would buy your products, vs advertising where you try to get said audience to buy it.
If you are to say sell a $50k+ car, you will probably need to realize that targeting say a college campus for the car, while may get attention will not lead to many sales as that general population isn't in a financial position to get a $50k car, howeve
Point of this article? (Score:2)
And the US has degrees and programs around digital marketing and "new media entrepreneurship"
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Yes, but they are not devoted to government propaganda, unlike Chinese "influencers". If you are an influencer in China, the CCP will make sure you are co-opted into their the Party line.
USA problem (Score:2)
In the USA we often have journalism in the same dept as public relations (aka propaganda.) We're just behind... unless you count Fox News as journalism...
lol (Score:2)
For years, my go to response for automation doom-and-gloomers was "Look, social media specialist is an actual job. I'm not worried about automation (as opposed to government policies) creating mass unemployment. We are endlessly inventive at inventing jobs."
Getting harder to use that example anymore; it was so right that everyone now is like "huh, of course it's an actual job, WTH?"
"Do you want fries with that?" (Score:2)
Hopefully, junk courses like this teach this skill as it will be the most used and important skill for those who graduate.
This crazy world... (Score:2)
Begging for Freebies 101 (Score:2)
Isn't that what influencers do all day? Brag about the number of followers and then insist you give them products or services they promise to talk about?
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Well, not to defend the phenomenon per se, it doesn't look like an easy job to me. You might not be manufacturing substance, but manufacturing appearance is still work. In fact, it strikes me as particularly *tedious* work.
Even though the barrier to entry is low, once you're in that works against you when it comes to earning a living. You may be shoveling BS at your audience, but your revenue sources demand consistent performance on hard metrics. That means feeding the bottomless pit with content that ne
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If someone gets a degree in biology and never publishes a single academic paper, are they still a biologist?
No. A degree doesn't make you that thing. In fact, lot's of people don't end up getting professions in the things they got degrees in. This isn't new.
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I suspect the influencing is done in a way that it's (not supposed to be) obvious that it's coming from China (and in all likelihood, coming with the CCP's blessing and direction). If you go on a news site that allows commenting (ABC News, Fox News), it's likely that a lot of the commenters are from China, Russia or some other non-US location. Some of that is legit, of course; if there's a news article about the UK, then one might expect UK citizens to comment on it, even though the news site is US-based.
So its a Communications Degree (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah. It's a communications degree. What's the big deal? Most US Universities have had those for... I don't know, always?
They used to call them 'spies' (Score:2)
Apparently not anymore.
Government jobs. (Score:2)
This is basically a communication degree with a slightly different focus. In China, it is possible to get work for the government as an 'influencer' (aka propaganda). In the US, those people are hired by corporations, not the government, to promote products, not obedience.
As such, in the US the same degree has more of a focus on advertising, marketing, etc. In China, they drop this and focus just on social media, because the government is the largest employer of social media influencers.
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"In the US, those people are hired by corporations, not the government, to promote products, not obedience."
Not so sure about that.
Re: Government jobs. (Score:2)
You know... (Score:2)
That's nothing . . . (Score:2)
In the USA you can get a degree in Afro-Lesbian Studies.
Re: That's nothing . . . (Score:2)
"In the USA you can get a degree in Afro-Lesbian Studies."
What do you call the graduate who takes courses like this?
"WAITER!"
China no, don't do this (Score:2)
Please don't stoop to the level of the United States of America here.