Making Laughter: How Chinese Official Media Produce News on the Douyin (TikTok)

ABSTRACTAs algorithm-driven content platforms sweep the world, what is changing in journalism? This article investigates news production of the Chinese official media on Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok). From the perspectives of news gathering, professional role, and news value, we conducted a manual content analysis (N = 991) of four representative Chinese official media (People's Daily, China Youth Daily, Southern Metropolis Daily and Sichuan Observer) to reveal the commonalities and heterogeneities of their news production on Douyin. Then, through an automated content analysis of Sichuan Observer (N = 16,045), we illustrate how district media convergence centers have fought for public attention as emerging actors in the news ecosystem. Overall, we map the current practices of Chinese official media on the emerging algorithm-driven content platforms, focusing on how they pursue a new type of news orientation and popularize the Party's message while disseminating entertainment content. Contributions, such as the expansion of the classification framework of Chinese official media, and the catering of journalism to platforms, are discussed.KEYWORDS: DouyinTikTokDigital platformChinese official mediaSocial media logicNews production Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 We simplified the coding of the 5Ws because these videos usually do not have the full news texts. They usually tell the public what is happening and may explain the "who" and "why" through interview tracks, providing the time ("when") and location ("where") of events through titles and descriptions.2 We adjusted the spectrum of "disseminator-interventionist" as short news texts of a few seconds, common on Douyin, are classified as disseminator.3 Whether it comes from a cell phone camera can be determined by the technical quality of the video. Indicators, such as non-stabilized shooting and low resolution, are used by two coders to distinguish them from professional videos. Some interviewees' statements can also cross-validate the source of the video. For instance, "I happened to see the event, so I filmed it with my phone".4 The news value of "entertainment" is similar to role performance of "infotainment". In actual coding, a video may have multiple news values, and we only selected the most two obvious categories. Therefore, some of the "infotainment" role model may be given "good news", "conflict", and "follow-up" news values.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (Grant No. 19BXW098).