Development Report on China’s New Media

China’s new media entered a new development stage in 2014. Online information security was elevated to become a matter of national strategic importance. Media convergence became an important part of if the central government’s efforts toward deepening reforms; Increasing the role of the internet in became an important means for improving governance; Internet finance was burgeoning while the growth of mobile Internet accelerated. New media penetration reached into many different sectors. In the meantime, recent development in China’s new media also brought many problems, including rumor-spreading via WeChat, threats to online information security, and underdevelopment in regulations for Internet finance. The country urgently needs to address these and other problems.

Since 2013, WeChat has entered a period of steady development. This report is a quantitative study of the development of WeChat in 2013 with a sample size of 1200 people from Beijing, Wuhan and Guangzhou respectively. From the perspective of the number of users, functional improvements, and business models, this report is a comprehensive review of the developmental status of WeChat and demonstrates that WeChat’s development is in line with the diffusion of innovation theory. It explores features of WeChat, including user behavior, user structure, user relationship, etc. It analyzes the advantages of WeChat in communication, such as user-friendliness, multimedia communication, cost-free usage and higher user loyalty, as well as the disadvantages of WeChat, such as information overload, the proliferation of spam and poor security. In addition, this report does a comparative study of WeChat and Weibo in terms of communication modes and communication impact. The report finds that WeChat has greater credibility. The credibility of WeChat, Weibo, online news information, newspaper, radio and television news was 63.4, 38.6, 21.7, 19.6, 14.6 and 33.9% respectively. Finally, it looks into the future of WeChat and proposes development strategies, including conducting technological innovation, enhancing the user experience, strengthening strategic cooperation with operators and developing platforms to increase profit.

2014 was a significant year for China’s cyber security development. China formally proposed a top-down design and strategic objective to turn itself into a major Internet power. It also played a more positive role in international cyberspace governance. Meanwhile, as international and domestic cyber security incidents occurred continuously, the situation is still grim. In 2015, China needed to strengthen the concept of cyber security under its open policy, adapt to the new era of global Internet management, and place greater emphasis on and better serve the purpose of building itself into a major Internet power.

With the rapid development of Chinese society, people’s lives have become increasingly fragmented, and social alienation has been gradually on the rise. The rise of WeChat meets people’s needs of interaction and communication in an increasingly fragmented society and constitutes an indispensable part of people’s daily lives. In 2014, China’s WeChat continued to develop and brought out many new functionalities. This article presents the development of WeChat and the problems arising out of WeChat’s development from six perspectives: communicative functions and features, development status and characteristics, major apps and features, security status and features, management status and features, trends, and prospects.

In 2014, Mobile Internet in China became the most popular public opinion platform on handheld devices globally. WeChat, News Clients, and HTML5 experienced a spectacular rise, but microblogs and mobile websites remained the dominant public opinion platform. New and traditional media collaborated to play a leading role in shaping the opinion for all kinds of emergencies and heated issues, gradually forming a new mobile public opinion trend characterized by latent public opinion and decentralization. Government and the media were making new efforts to achieve discursive power. China achieved remarkable progress in building a national new media team while multi-touch point coverage and service-oriented functions of new government media matured. China’s experience regarding the Internet and international influence of Chinese Internet firms continued to grow. The cross-border reach of the Internet brought new opportunities and challenges for the innovation of social governance. Mobile Internet governance made great breakthroughs and the rule of Internet by law developed.

In 2014, the transformation of China’s television industry accelerated. To adapt to the media convergence trend, media of all levels have conducted a lot of exploration in promoting convergence of traditional and new media. This paper analyzes the main features of the transformation of the television industry from four aspects: mechanism reform, content industry, socialization and Internet TV. Meanwhile, a few suggestions are provided for the future development of China’s television industry.

New communication technologies have reshaped traditional news dissemination mechanisms. Currently, with micro-communication gradually becoming the mainstream form of communication, it is necessary to establish a newspaper micro-communication capability evaluation system to meet the needs of media convergence. An analysis of currently existing problems with newspapers’ micro-communication capabilities is based on an evaluation of its current micro-communication capabilities. This can provide rational suggestions for enhancing newspapers’ micro-communication capabilities and achieve effective results.

In 2014, various factors including policy support, industry investment, key technological breakthroughs and capital investment led to the proliferation of smart devices. However, the development of smart devices was accompanied by many real-life problems such as violations of user privacy, supply chain integration, poor user experience and vague commercialization paths. Nevertheless, the introduction of the special media attributes of smart devices into the field of information dissemination was thought-provoking for journalists and theoretical researchers alike.

2014 witnessed a full-scale mobilization of China’s government affairs new media platforms and the emergence of platform diversification. Under the framework of “Weibo, WeChat and Client”, government affairs new media platforms have been extended to ‘10+’ mobile media platforms under six different new media categories. In particular, audio-visual new media for government affairs represented by short videos and internet radio, as well as government affairs new media based on mobile search applications such as “Direct Channel to Government” have realized their open convergence from “time shift” to “displacement”. The nonlinear developmental trends in their mobilization, socialization, O2O service and audio-visual technology are evident. Meanwhile, with the rapid evolution of mobile new media, morphological differentiation and the dynamic migration of audience attention, government affairs new media are developing in an increasingly impetuous environment.

In 2014, Internet-aided governance developed rapidly, presenting the following characteristics and trends. In terms of macro-environment, Internet-aided governance falls into the category of top-level design. It is starting to gain top-level attention, to be included in the nation’s overall vision and strategic considerations. On a large scale, the “All in your palm” mobile government is starting to dominate. At the same time, in terms of overall coverage development, e-government moved further towards deepening of a clustered matrix. In terms of application mode, the government O2O mode with built-in integrated platforms and online-to-offline activation was gradually popularized. The government’s potential to harness micro-videos, internet radio, live streaming and other new applications were constantly being discovered. Regarding efficiency, Internet-aided governance experienced development in core issues. Development became more ministrant, shifting focus away from propagandistic and interactive functions. It is also getting stronger in social management and influencing public opinion. Also, a digital gap in government affairs emerged. The government needs to develop its digital thinking and progress systemic management—two areas which will determine the growth of Internet-aided governance.

Since 2014, the development of China’s microblog was affected by WeChat and other entirely a mobile network based new micro-communication platforms. Because Tencent began to shift its focus from WeChat to micro-video and microblog in its overall development strategy, Sina Weibo basically occupied a dominant position in the Chinese microblog landscape. The microblog user growth slowed down on the whole, and the influence of the “Big Vs” as an outlet for public opinion also reduced. Nevertheless, after eight years of development, microblog has become a relatively mature media app in China’s new media communication landscape with unique media properties and a strong ability to disseminate public opinion.

The new media industry in China enjoyed high-speed development in 2014. (New media industry in this report mainly refers to the Internet media industry, including online advertising, online games, online videos, and big data.) Remarkable progress was achieved in online advertising, online games, and online finance, and the combined scale of the media industry exceeded 200 billion yuan. The new media industry has also entered into an advanced stage of development, which has resulted in new trends: changes in market patterns in the media industry, organic integration of “Internet +” with traditional industries, dominance of mobile internet, vigorous development of O2O, new trends in mergers and acquisitions, digital media achieving public listing in China, commercialization of big data, and digital businesses providing business ecosystems.

Factors prompting the development of mobile reading industry in 2014 were the increment of output value further transferring from terminal industry to content industry, a reconstitution of market pattern, and diversified operating systems competing with each other. New momentum indicates that convergence media devices and emerging markets will become crucial growing points