Chinese Online Celebrity Culture: From A Perspective Of Communication Studies

It was in the end of2003, a girl who named herself “Sister Lotus”started to release weird photos and speeches on the forum of TsinghuaUniversity and Peking University. As her words and deeds are against thetraditional Chinese culture and Chinese people’s appreciation of beauty,people discussed her and criticized on her frequently. Due to the attentionshe got from netizens, she rose to fame in the beginning of2004. A largeamount of information related to her can be got online. Apart from that, shewas invited by the TV shows frequently. What is more, she was report byWashington Post in2005. After her, a whole range of online celebritiesappeared and triggered a blooming passion on the internet. Those peoplewho raised fame on the internet are called online celebrities in China and“Sister Lotus” is viewed as the originator of the Chinese online celebrityculture. Currently, Chinese online celebrity culture has been developingfor about a decade. Many researchers were attracted to study this topic anda large amount of literature can be found. In this paper, my research aims is to find out the influences of onlinecelebrities, how society think about online celebrities, and howgovernment should regulate on online celebrities. Questionnaire and focusgroup will be used as the research methods. The questionnaire will onlytarget at Chinese people while focus group targets at both Chinese andnon-Chinese people who have knowledge of online celebrities.The result of the findings demonstrates that the participants have agood understanding of online celebrities. The result presents that onlinecelebrities are not regarded as real celebrities and the influences of onlinecelebrities are not that negative despite the sheer number of negativetactics which online celebrities used. It can be proved as most of theparticipants do not want damage their reputation to be online celebritiesand to reach huge profit. What is more, they tend to be famous for theirtalent if they are being online celebrities. Meanwhile, proper governmentregulation is supported by the participants for the sake of protecting youngpeople.It can be concluded from the research that the influences of onlinecelebrities are not as negative as it was thought and proper regulationshould be conducted by the government.