Empowerment And Exploitation:the Business Logic Of Short Video Platform

Short video is a new media,with its vivid,strong performances,convenience and entertainment have attracted 88.3% of Internet users to use them,becoming both an important channel for social information dissemination and a new affluent node of the Internet.In the face of such a large user scale and influence,how to recognize,evaluate and regulate short video platforms has become an urgent issue at present.This study examines the topic of short video through the visual angel of The Political Economy of Communication.According to the theoretical paradigm of this school,information dissemination activity is not only a process of information flow and exchange,but also a material production activity.The political economy of communication school views the mass media as economic organizations,asks who controls these enterprises and for whom they serve,and focuses on ethical issues such as power,equity,and social interest in the dissemination of social information.Based on this perspective,this study locates the research subject as a platform,and specifically selects two leading enterprises,Dou Yin and Kuai Shou,focusing on their commercial attributes.The research questions focus on the commercial logic of the platform,examining the production activities and commercialization process of media organizations,with special attention to the ethical issues involved.Business logic is the internal law by which a company operates and achieves its business goals,and the external manifestation is the profit model of the company.This study argues that the business logic of short video platforms can be summarized into three sequential paths of empowerment-control-capture.In terms of empowerment,the decentralization of short video app distribution and evaluation methods provides an equal starting point for every ordinary user.In this ideal field,more individuals are activated,and people realize their personal value and reap various emotional satisfaction in the interaction of creation and viewing.With the platform's channel business value and big data precision positioning,production users can transform content creation into personal revenue,and business users can reach more and more accurate target customers to achieve efficient exposure,with short video platforms as the center of the industry cluster is flourishing.However,empowerment is only the surface of the platform,which deliberately highlights the positioning of the content platform with the discourse of "record" and obscures the commercial attributes of the platform.In fact,the platform's organization and product design both reflect the platform's intention to control.In terms of organization,the platform's algorithm rules are useroriented,allowing the creators to consciously internalize the platform's business goal of attracting users,while using digital management to efficiently regulate the creators' creations,thereby capturing more of the creators' residual value.In terms of product design,the platform hopes to maximize the length of use of users,because the data,works and social relationships produced by users who are addicted to them for fun are important business resources for Internet companies,and the platform captures them for capital accumulation and reproduction.According to the business logic of empowerment and capture short video platforms achieve privatization and commodification of social members' data,and this efficient value-added path allows short video platforms to grow rapidly with increasing business value and power.This study compares the business logic of the platforms,focusing on the ethical issues involved,and finds that there is a potential risk that short video platforms generalize power and threaten the dissemination of social information.The study concludes by proposing directions for the governance of short-form video platforms,taking into account the governance measures at the current stage and the potential risks identified by the study.This study intends to warn of the risk of public resources being occupied by commercial privatization,and call on regulators to pay attention to the recent commercial development of the platforms so that they can operate healthily under regulation.