In the digital era, two seemingly different media, podcasts and WeChat Official Accounts, share similarities: both attract audiences who seek depth in certain fields of knowledge. Both of them provide platforms for longer form content. This article will explore how these two media shape the content and dissemination of information, and analyze the challenges they face in today’s circumstances of fragmented video dominated by algorithms and traffic.
I. What are WeChat Official Accounts? A brief introduction
WeChat Official Accounts are a feature within the WeChat ecosystem, China’s most important “super app”. They are similar to a hybrid of a blog and an e-newsletter, through which individuals, businesses or media organizations can register an account and publish long form content through images and words. And they are published directly to followers.
Subscribing to a WeChat Official Account is like following both a Facebook page and an email newsletter. When an account publishes content, it automatically apeears in the WeChat message board of subscribers, and sometimes it can even be pushed directly to all followers like a mass mail.
In sum, WeChat Official Account serves as both a vital outlet for content creators and a primary platform for the dissemination of public opinion and knowledge within China’s social media ecosystem.
II. Audiences of Podcasts and WeChat Official Accounts: A Comparison with Short Videos
One similarity between podcasts and WeChat Official Accounts is that their audiences are generally more educated, while short videos, such as TikTok or Douyin, are more targeted at general entertainment.
III. Greater Narratives Space and Higher Information Density
IV. Algorithmic Pressure and the Tendency to Shallow Content
V. How Media Shape Information
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