Fandomization of online video or television in China

Abstract

In this article, I explain a new media ecology for online television in which the online audience or fans and their participation play a stronger role in swaying the online video content or production. I call it fandomization of online television. Dependent on the number of online users and the viewership, online television platforms have to produce programs that align with the fans’ discourse and emotions to maximize their viewership. This results in a fan-discourse-led production, as in the case of China’s huge online video or television market. Based on my study of the top online television production company, Tencent Video, and its top television program, as well as ethnographic observations of their productions, I illustrate how Tencent Video manages fans by establishing a fan-based platform that works in tandem with its television platform. The dual television and fan-based platform of the television industry forms an interlocking web of the network of fans, their idols, and social media, with the consequences that social and political public discourse are highly synchronized in China’s extremely controlled Internet.