Chinese social media in influencers era

Abstract

My job of thesis has the purpose of analyzing the role and the use of social media within Chinese society. It is known that Chinese social media has its own landscape and paradigm, which is totally different and has totally different issues than occidental social media. I want to explain how Chinese society developed and changed due to the use of social media under many aspects. The structure of my thesis is split into three chapters. In the first chapter I analyze all the most popular occidental and Chinese social media and I make a comparison among them. Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp and Instagram are occidental, but also very popular in Asia, but they are banned by Chinese government, but this absolutely means a gap or a desert in Chinese internet and social media because they built a totally independent social media model made of QQ, Wechat, Renren, Sina weibo and many other social media. In the second chapter I want to describe how these social media had an impact on Chinese society and especially on the market, since in the third chapter, in fact, I write about Chinese influencers, who actually are called “kol”, literally key opinion leaders who completely changed Chinese market and consumer choice on purchases. I describe some of the most famous influencers in China and each of them is specialized in specific aspects of life such as: fashion, food, daily life. The conclusion of this work thesis is that social media nowadays have become a fundamental part in daily life, especially in China, and people have to deal with this new situation.