cuicuigo is a clip blogger on TikTok, he now has nearly 800,000 followers and has received more than 80 million likes. His job is to extract clips from videos, cartoons, anime, movies, etc. in hot news events, re-dub them with music, add special effects, and add attractive commentary to attract people’s attention. This is the job of film and television clip bloggers. With the rise of the Internet, this is an easy-to-learn and profitable job.
The concept of the ‘two-step flow of communication’ suggests that the flow of information and influence from the mass media to their audiences involves two steps: from the media to certain individuals (i.e., the opinion leaders) and from them to the public. In the traditional theory, with original creations such as film and television dramas as the center, clip bloggers become opinion leaders, conveying their views to the audience and forming a theoretical system.However, in the Internet era, the emergence of self-media has meant that the right to speak is no longer monopolized by mainstream, upper-class individuals. Ordinary people, who in the past could only accept opinions, can also voice their own thoughts. Some film and television clip bloggers not only edit original films, but also edit videos of other opinion leaders expressing their views, and comment on them. For example, they might analyze other people’s blog posts or live recordings, which to some extent is a “secondary creation.” And their audience groups sometimes have similarities, which is due to the big data algorithm push mechanism unique to self-media. For example, if I like to watch Modern Family, I will see many clips, many videos of bloggers analyzing the plot, and also videos of other bloggers analyzing these clip bloggers. This forms the relationship shown in the figure below (I made this figure myself, maybe it is not academic enough).
I think this may be the trend of mass media development, the threshold for expressers is getting lower and lower, and the number of expressers and different opinions is increasing. This may be driving our society towards a more diverse direction.
reference:
public. Communication, Two-step Flow of
2001, International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
G. Weimann
