Some interesting facts about Chinese social media

As we all know, Chinese government blocks Facebook, Twitter and YouTube from their citizens which I think is really a stupid act. However just like the article of Stone, we can actually find ways to get access to them which is called “jump over the wall”. In this way, we Chinese people can use these social media and thus find more truth of our own country. On YouTube, I’ve seen videos that were forbidden by the government long time ago. I can see other people’s comments and opinions about China and see how I was fooled by the government before. I start to understand, why Chinese government would block these social media. Because if they let these social media open to the citizens, there will be a revolution. So I really agree with Stone, with his theory of online activism. Online activism is really a good way for people to participate, to join and to know. Sometimes not all people are willing to run in the first. That’s great risk. People may die for this. However, if we can gather people’s ideas from internet, and kind of spread this idea to more people using internet, the group will grow bigger and bigger. And I have faith in this.

I would like to talk a little bit about Chinese social media. We have all different kind of social media too. Actually I think some of their tools and features are even better than Facebook and Twitter. For example, Sina Mini blog. This one is similar to Twitter. It’s also 140 characters restricted and you can follow and add people. It is a great tool for people to get information. So what’s its disadvantage? Well, though it’s good, it’s still controlled by the government, which means if you say something bad about the government, your post will be deleted. Sometimes your ID will be deleted too and you will never be able to use it. This sounds really horrible and it is. So we have to be very careful of any post we made about politics. However things get better these years simply because there are too many people and the government is not fast enough. So you may see one post for couple of days and then it just disappears. So for example, what I'm posting right now will not be seen in any Chinese social media. This is the biggest disadvantage of Chiense social media. Other than this, it’s really a good tool for people to check and share information.

Besides mini blog, we have a lot of different social media like QQ and WeiXin, these two are more like Facebook and you can easily get in touch with your friends. I use them as Skype too to contact my parents in China. They work really well too.

In China every year we’ll choose best 10 words of the year. These words are really popular online and most of them are made by internet users and spread by social media. So social media actually influence how people talk. If you don’t use social media, sometimes you don’t even know what people are talking about. I’m a heavy user of social media so I know all these words. Sometimes when I say them to my roommate, she doesn’t understand.

On Sina mini blog, I will follow something I’m interested. Like I follow several film clubs and they will post good movies every day. I also follow several fan clubs of the stars I like, and I can see their information and pictures. A good thing is that most of my friends don’t like to post too much of their lives on social media which is good for me because I can just focus on the stuffs I’m interested. Mini blog even can organize post for me so you can choose not to read your friends’ posts or not the club’s post. That’s why I would check them every day, they are just really useful.

There’re a lot of topics of Chinese social media and I only cover little in this blog post. It’s just really interesting to see how social media will go in the future and how it will lead a revolution.