Zhen Ye | Livestreaming Industry in China: An Investigation of Cultural Production, Labour and Platformization

Zhen Ye | Livestreaming Industry in China: An Investigation of Cultural Production, Labour and Platformization | Erasmus University Rotterdam, Media and Communication Department | Promotor(es); supervisor(s): Prof. dr. Susanne Janssen and dr. Tonny Krijnen | September 2020 – September 2024 | ye[at]eshcc.eur.nl

We are witnessing how the development of live-streaming practices is increasingly influencing Chinese people’s everyday life in social, cultural, and economic terms: The showroom live-streaming, known as xiuchang zhibo in Chinese, features various content of entertainment from singing and dancing to mundane everyday life activities such as chatting and eating. In this sector, the content of entertainment is mostly produced by young women, while the viewers were predominantly men. The major revenue stream comes from the virtual gifts purchased by the live-streaming viewers. Whereas the e-commerce live-streaming stands for a different business model. The platforms offer brands and retailers live-streaming channels to connect to consumers, whereas brands and retailers either hire professional live-streamers or celebrities to promote their commodities through live-streaming or conduct live-streaming themselves. This approach of combining live-streaming with e-commerce has been propelled into the main marketing and sales channel not only for brands but also for small local business and farmers. It fascinates me that live-streaming technology enables us to put different aspects of our social life online in real-time.

Therefore, this research aims to offer a critical account of why and how individuals, institutions, platforms come together as components of the emergent live-streaming industry, produce and circulate certain cultural forms in the socio-political context of China. Rather than assuming that it is mainly the technological conditions constructed by digital platforms that determine the cultural production of live-streaming, this research explores how the technological conditions of platforms are influencing the inner working of the streamer guilds or MCNs, their structures of power, and daily routines, to develop a “complex, ambivalent, and contested” (Hesmondhalgh, 2019) understanding of China’s live-streaming industry. This research aims to unravel the relation between individual subjectivity and creativity, institutional forces, technological and social conditions that commonly shape the cultural production of live-streaming.