Unboxing the Chinese blind boxes among China’s grown-up missing children: Probabilistic and elastic prosumption through mediated collection, exchange and resale of figurines
Global Media and China
This paper situates the ‘Blind Box’ consumption, collection and prosumption practices in China wi... more This paper situates the ‘Blind Box’ consumption, collection and prosumption practices in China within globalisation and the ‘media-mix’ fandom, which is to consume and resell media merchandise in opaque packages as probability goods. We re-centre the focus of fandom studies on the then much neglected ‘missing child’ and now the ‘emerging adult’ in a globalising world. We argue the Chinese emerging adult consumes, collects and resells Blind Boxes as a generative and agentic collection and fandom practice, defined as ‘probabilistic and elastic prosumption’ in a quasi-social and quasi-individual manner. We then critically examine and unpack the cultural production and meaning making process undertook by collectors who also accumulate sociality and form identity through affective and economic investments, mediated collection and exchange of figurines in a post-socialist and consumerist society.
Power, Freedom, and Privacy on a Discipline-and-Control Facebook, and the Implications for Internet Governance
International social exchanges have always been important to China’s cultural soft power and imag... more International social exchanges have always been important to China’s cultural soft power and image construction overseas. This study focuses on an internationally renowned mega influencer Li Ziqi and her vlogs on YouTube. These orchestrated vlogs tell stories of rural Chinese life and construct a desirable traditional Chinese rural culture for netizens at home and abroad. Informed by framing and cultivation theory, this study examines how user-generated content on national images can affect social media users’ perceptions of reality. Content analysis is used to analyze the visual portrayals of Chinese rural culture, including its customs and values, aesthetics, and cultural and scenic places in Li’s vlogs. Discourse analysis is further used to examine user comments and demonstrate her vlog content’s impact on user perceptions of Chinese rural culture. This study sheds light on how a complex and hybrid national image with ‘Chineseness,’ and a personal image with self-Orientalized and...
Trauma reporting such as disaster, war and conflict often generates large newspaper headlines as ... more Trauma reporting such as disaster, war and conflict often generates large newspaper headlines as news deemed to have impact, proximity and scale tends to attract the audience's attention. Journalists are asked to seize "immediate, dramatic and novel" news to evoke "excited curiosity", by digging and exposing "the blood, injury and violence", a trend that is more evident in commercial news outlets. 1 Reports about conflicts and disasters also conform to the fourth-estate mantle of serving the public interest; to inform, educate and unite the public, especially in the event of a tragedy. In China, there is now more room for journalists to navigate when reporting such topics and since the 1990s there have seen numerous occasions when Chinese correspondents have been able to cover traumatic events like disaster, war and conflicts in and out China. This has been aimed at domestic and even international audiences. 2 Conventionally, journalists are deemed to be the impact-makers through their agenda-setting and framing, but the impact on themselves is largely neglected. This omission is further complicated by the negative attitude towards stress and its symptoms, or generic help-seeking. It is a culture of silence. 3 Some research views journalism as a macho profession and journalists as a resilient group. 4 Yet, journalists and correspondents are not always well-trained or prepared before they are sent to
China's International Communication and Relationship Building, 2022
Doing Music Industry Research in China
This chapter is a methodology chapter with reflections on local knowledge and insights. I aim to ... more This chapter is a methodology chapter with reflections on local knowledge and insights. I aim to contextualise the music industry, its operation and research in an emerging market. Understanding and doing business in China is often a full semester module in world top business schools, which makes China a unique market for both doing business and research. This chapter also prepares the policy and legal discussions in Chapter 4.
What newspapers and people say about #China70
Chinese News Discourse
The Traditional Proprietary Model
This chapter focuses on the traditional proprietary model in the music industries, which is to tr... more This chapter focuses on the traditional proprietary model in the music industries, which is to treat music as copyrightable goods and artefacts. The music industry is a concept derived from the cultural industry concept coined by Adorno and scholars of the Frankfurt School. It views popular music as mass produced industrial goods. To put it into a nutshell, it focuses on the creation of music and the value exchange and realisation of it through market mechanisms with an end for consumption. This chapter will start by analysing the exploitation of music with diversified income streams constituting an established value chain. However, the primary focus of this chapter is the traditional proprietary model with music fixed in physical format as a control mechanism in a pre-digital age.
The Platform Ecosystem Model
This chapter investigates the third emerging business model of the music industry during the past... more This chapter investigates the third emerging business model of the music industry during the past ten years when China entered the social media era, embracing an unprecedented online platform economy. A significant change in the music industry is manifested by the business model shift from music as artefact and information to music as services. This chapter continues to address the research question on business model innovation in a shifting industry landscape and changing policy environment. It first sets the stage for the discussion of the platform ecosystem model in the Chinese music industry by outlining the theories used and copyright law developments in previous chapters before moving on to detailed analyses of recent case studies.
China’s Copyright Law and the Music Industry: A Social-Legal Analysis
This chapter conducts a socio-legal analysis of the development of Chinese copyright law in the m... more This chapter conducts a socio-legal analysis of the development of Chinese copyright law in the music industry. Taking a historical approach, it provides much neglected evidence about the autonomous development of Chinese copyright law. So far, the book has addressed the paradox between the weak copyright regime in China and its recent seemingly positive development in the music industry, particularly in the online digital sector. This chapter will lay the bedrock for the discussion of policy implications and specific recommendations facing the third amendment of Chinese copyright law. It also generates relevant themes that guide the analyses in the rest of the book to address the research questions on potential business models, strategies and tactics with an aim to get artists and creators fairly compensated.
From copycat to copyright: intellectual property amendments and the development of Chinese online video industries
International Journal of Cultural Policy, 2022
Danmaku_ranking_csv_and_glossary_file – Supplemental material for Slice of life in a live and wired masquerade: Playful prosumption as identity work and performance in an identity college Bilibili
Supplemental material, Danmaku_ranking_csv_and_glossary_file for Slice of life in a live and wire... more Supplemental material, Danmaku_ranking_csv_and_glossary_file for Slice of life in a live and wired masquerade: Playful prosumption as identity work and performance in an identity college Bilibili by Zhen Troy Chen in Global Media and China
Systeme et procede pour generer, distribuer et/ou faire rembourser des offres promotionnelles au moyen de dispositifs electroniques
L'invention concerne un systeme pour generer, distribuer et/ou faire rembourser des promotion... more L'invention concerne un systeme pour generer, distribuer et/ou faire rembourser des promotions electroniques. Les promotions electroniques peuvent etre generees au moyen de profils de consommateurs determines et envoyees directement a un dispositif de consommateur electronique. Au moment de la commande, les promotions electroniques peuvent etre appliquees automatiquement a la commande controlee par le dispositif de consommateur electronique. Dans un mode de realisation, le dispositif de consommateur electronique est un dispositif mobile.
System und verfahren zum erzeugen, verteilen und/oder einl senvon werbeangeboten durch verwendung elektronsicher einrichtungen
Using Van Gennep’s theory of Rite of Passage as its framework, this article examines the impact o... more Using Van Gennep’s theory of Rite of Passage as its framework, this article examines the impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) on Chinese culture as depicted through death and mourning in Wang Fang’s (penname Fang Fang) recently published Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City. As part of the efforts to control the outbreak, the Chinese government took over the managing of the deceased, which triggered heated discussions on Chinese social media. Fang Fang’s diary, originally written as daily entries on Chinese social media platform Weibo, serves as a voice for those suffering during the pandemic, mediating between personal accounts, accounts of friends, family and those living in Wuhan during the pandemic. These flesh out how the virus has not only been disturbing for Chinese people’s lives but also disrupted the death rites and mourning rituals for those who have passed. Our article infuses a digital ontological reading with an anthropological twist that helps to understand how...
China's Music Industry Unplugged "Contextualisation, contextualisation and contextualisation. A h... more China's Music Industry Unplugged "Contextualisation, contextualisation and contextualisation. A highly recommended book to understanding and doing businesses in Chinese cultural and creative industries with policy insights and theoretical contributions."-GU Jie, Professor, Communication University of China "This is probably the first book that addresses the new digital music economy and business as part of the creative industry in China. Troy Chen is imbued with the passion to offer strategy-namely a 'spirit' of social entrepreneurship-to artists and creators in the music industry to tackle the constraints of copyright regime and new challenges and complexities accompanied with the platform economy.
This paper investigates the mediated narratives and identity construction of a reading club of fe... more This paper investigates the mediated narratives and identity construction of a reading club of female workers in call centers of multinational corporations (MNCs) in the Chinese city of Dalian, where the discourse of an empowering 'female force' has been popularized and scrutinized on Chinese social media. These professional workers manage and construct their emerging middle-class identities through embodied experiences and mediated discourses fostered by an English reading club that is both online and offline. Responding to recent critiques of neoliberal feminism in the Chinese context, this study uses a mixed-method approach to unpack the complex processes of these women's identity construction and performance through participatory reading practices. This includes ethnographic participant observation in offline reading club activities, in-depth interviews, and a discourse analysis of mediated narratives on social media (WeChat). We argue that Chinese working women's identity construction and performance are shaped by complex intersections of class, nation, gender and workplace/institutions, where their encounters are in flux, given the changing neoliberal globalization process after China's four-decade long opening up reform. This study challenges and extends the critique of neoliberal feminism and finds evidence of agency and tactical engagement whereby female workers negotiate their emerging middle-class identities and forge possible solidarities within a networked workplace.
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