Media Sociology Research On Short Video Entrepreneurship Of The Unemployed In County

Employment is the foundation of people’s livelihood.In recent years,with the increasing downward pressure on the economy,employment problems have become prominent.Due to the fewer production factors and fewer jobs in the county,the problem of unemployed in the county is more prominent.At the same time,with the development of the Internet,the digital economy industry represented by the Douyin platform has spawned emerging digital occupations such as live broadcast salespersons and video creators to provide more reference items for the career choices of unemployed youths in the county.This research focuses on the practice of media entrepreneurship for the unemployed youth in the county,in order to respond to the possibility and existing problems of the unemployed youth in the county using the media for employment in the face of serious employment problems.Specifically,this study focuses on the entrepreneurial practice of Douyin short video content of unemployed youths in county towns,and studies the content characteristics,content production mechanism and influencing factors of its production.Relying on the theoretical perspective of media sociology,this study applies fieldwork,network ethnography,content analysis and text analysis to study the Douyin accounts,production content,and content production processes of unemployed people in counties.The study found that county Douyin entrepreneurs generally have the problems of low content quality and insufficient production capacity,and the content they produce is templated and low-level repetition.Most county Douyin entrepreneurs have a content profit model of e-commerce monetization and live broadcast rewards,and only a small number of entrepreneurs with strong capabilities choose to operate the Douyin community to tap the higher economic value of the community.Without the blessing of high-quality content,county Douyin entrepreneurs mainly rely on the "return" mechanism of the Douyin platform,brushing data for other users and some curious things to gain attention.In general,unemployed people in counties have the problem of high investment and low return when carrying out Douyin content entrepreneurship practice,and most young people are still in a state of content entrepreneurship on the Douyin platform but the number of fans is not enough to monetize,and eventually become digital labor who increases the activity of the Douyin platform for free.The entrepreneurship of Douyin content by unemployed people in counties is affected by social relations,platform factors,and political and economic factors.Technical factors are the gathering carrier of various influencing factors,social factors and economic factors are the core driving force for Douyin content entrepreneurship for unemployed people in the county,and political factors play a secondary auxiliary role in this process.The influence of each factor is reflected in the career choices of unemployed people in its county and the content produced in content entrepreneurship.The platform’s technology and content empowerment provide the possibility for unemployed people in counties to choose Douyin content entrepreneurship,economic downward pressure and the situation of digital economy development,and social relations are the direct factors that promote unemployed people in counties to choose Douyin content entrepreneurship.In terms of content production,first of all,the social relationship and social structure of unemployed people in the county town in Douyin content entrepreneurship directly affect their content production behavior,on the one hand,they will choose to produce content according to what people around them are watching,on the other hand,the social status,educational background,and cognitive experience represented by their social structure affect the content they produce;Secondly,"profit is king" drives the content "alienation" of Douyin content entrepreneurship for unemployed people in counties,and in pursuit of the "traffic economy",they cater to the curiosity of the audience,produce earthy videos,and constantly inject the idea of money worship into short videos and live broadcasts to guide consumption;On the one hand,media and technology platforms label certain deviant content as "vulgar" and "vulgar" by creating moral panic,and on the other hand,unemployed people in counties will actively label their Douyin content entrepreneurship as "positive energy" in mainstream discourse to gain "legitimacy" in the social and cultural order;Finally,the regulation and algorithm mechanism of the technology platform will also restrict and regulate the content production of Douyin content entrepreneurship for unemployed people in the county.This study believes that social structure relationship,economic interest drive and platform algorithm mechanism are the key motivations to promote the county unemployed to continuously join Douyin content entrepreneurship and continuously produce content,but the problems of low content quality and insufficient content production capacity common among county unemployed Douyin content entrepreneurship make these successive entrepreneurial practices face the dilemma of high investment and low return,and the "grassroots Internet celebrity dream" of becoming an Internet celebrity to successfully start a business and monetize through the Douyin platform is broken.The technology platform represented by Douyin acts as a social stabilizer to a certain extent,taking digital technology and content entrepreneurship as the solution to China’s social employment problem,absorbing the social unstable factor of unemployed people in the county into the ranks of content entrepreneurship on short video platforms,and restructuring the social relationships in the technology platform,but this re-structuring does not change the social structure of the unemployed in the county,but reproduces and solidifies this social structure on the technology platform.