Online Distribution of English-Language TV in Mainland China

In the age of multiple screens, online video streaming has in the 2010s and present become the most significant way of consuming television content in mainland China. Among all the available content provided by Chinese streaming services, English-language television series stands out as an imported audio-visual product that is mainly distributed and circulated on the internet rather than television channels due to relevant media industry regulations and policies. Prior to landing on online streaming services as its legal distribution platform, English-language television series initially engendered its local audience base via informal distribution means, such as pirated DVDs and file-sharing and downloading websites; yet some of these informal services still exist in a grey area, since the content library formal streaming services possess is largely restricted in terms of size. From the perspective of media industry studies, this thesis deals with both formal and informal distribution platforms with a focus on formal distribution practices and the mechanisms behind them, which involve cultural, political and economic factors. This thesis first examines the streaming services themselves, studying distribution practices for American and British television series to understand the logic behind the localization of the business practices surrounding transnational television and to illustrate the features streaming services adopt to cater to online audiences based on local streaming consumption habits. The thesis then investigates how the current distribution pattern has been constructed by state supervision through cultural policies and censorship and by the historically dynamic relationship between formal distribution and informal distribution. I argue that the localized online distribution of English-language television series in mainland China is the result of the interplay among distributors’ business practices, Chinese authorities’ regulatory practices and Chinese viewers’ consumption habits and viewer practices. Putting the thesis in a global context, I contend that the development of online streaming technologies has created distinctive forms of media consumption in mainland China. Within the specific local political environment, the localized distribution pattern of transnational television content represents part of China’s response to the global television trade

Research on Users’ Perceived Beliefs from the Perspective of Review Components

In the Internet era, how the review system brings user good experiences and influences users’ perceived beliefs has become an important issue. Based on word-of-mouth and user perception theory, this article builds the model between four characteristics of the review components (integrity, intelligent extraction, operability and social interaction) and four types of users’ perceived beliefs (perceived usefulness, reliability, convenience and pleasure). Also, this study makes analysis of 101 questionnaires, which shows that integrity, intelligent extraction has a positive influence on perceived usefulness; intelligent extraction and operability have a positive influence on perceived convenience; operability and social interaction have a positive influence on perceived pleasure; and social interaction has a positive influence on perceived reliability. According to these research results, user awareness and the performance of review components can be improved through measures to meet users’ demand in practice

FedEdge AI-TC: A Semi-supervised Traffic Classification Method based on Trusted Federated Deep Learning for Mobile Edge Computing

As a typical entity of MEC (Mobile Edge Computing), 5G CPE (Customer Premise Equipment)/HGU (Home Gateway Unit) has proven to be a promising alternative to traditional Smart Home Gateway. Network TC (Traffic Classification) is a vital service quality assurance and security management method for communication networks, which has become a crucial functional entity in 5G CPE/HGU. In recent years, many researchers have applied Machine Learning or Deep Learning (DL) to TC, namely AI-TC, to improve its performance. However, AI-TC faces challenges, including data dependency, resource-intensive traffic labeling, and user privacy concerns. The limited computing resources of 5G CPE further complicate efficient classification. Moreover, the "black box" nature of AI-TC models raises transparency and credibility issues. The paper proposes the FedEdge AI-TC framework, leveraging Federated Learning (FL) for reliable Network TC in 5G CPE. FL ensures privacy by employing local training, model parameter iteration, and centralized training. A semi-supervised TC algorithm based on Variational Auto-Encoder (VAE) and convolutional neural network (CNN) reduces data dependency while maintaining accuracy. To optimize model light-weight deployment, the paper introduces XAI-Pruning, an AI model compression method combined with DL model interpretability. Experimental evaluation demonstrates FedEdge AI-TC's superiority over benchmarks in terms of accuracy and efficient TC performance. The framework enhances user privacy and model credibility, offering a comprehensive solution for dependable and transparent Network TC in 5G CPE, thus enhancing service quality and security.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figure

How online video platforms could support China’s independent microfilm (short film) makers and enhance the Chinese film industry

As with the US and EU media landscapes, the Chinese film industry is dominated by platforms similar to Netflix, Hulu and Amazon, most notably in the form of the BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) companies that according to He (2015) are ‘taking over the film industry’. These have been described as ‘imperialistic’ in the monopolization of their respective markets and in the use of their financial muscle to squeeze content creators’ incomes (Jin, 2015). While in the western market this undermines the mainly middle-class professionals who drive creativity (Timberg,2015), in China it limits the opportunities for new talent to grow. This paper will, therefore, give an overview of the Chinese microfilm (online short movies) industry and investigate how Chinese BAT companies and other online video providers could enhance the Chinese film industry by developing infrastructure to direct revenue of microfilms to the creators

사용자 생성 콘텐츠 웹 사이트의 동영상 확산-Bilibili기반으로 실증 분석

학위논문(석사)--서울대학교 대학원 :공과대학 협동과정 기술경영·경제·정책전공,2019. 8. 황준석.User-generated content emphasis user value, and based on the development of Web 2.0, it takes an important position whatever in information diffusion and market management part. Therefore, it is necessary to identify which factors would give influence to information diffusion in UGC. This thesis based on a video UGC website – Bilibili, try to find influential factors during the video diffusion process. Different from previous research which mainly focuses on the social network, this thesis mainly used video characteristic data to explore effective factors to video diffusion. First, after the draw the number of views increase trend within one month, views trend in Bilibili indicates that video diffusion showed a different diffusion curve. Then through careful analysis of each different diffusion periods, this thesis found the influential factors are different during different diffusion periods. The analysis result showed that higher interactive among users and contents could attract more people to watch the video which improves video diffusion rate, and also showed the impacts of general comment below the video and sharing activity, video quality to video diffusion. Based on this thesis, some marginal implications also introduced such as it could provide some basis for web designers, people who use UGC as a marketing tool and users who want to be a UGC content producer.사용자 생성 콘텐츠 (UGC) 사용자의 가치를 강조하며 Web 2.0의 개발을 기반으로 정보 확산 및 시장 관리에 중요한 역할을 가지고있다. 따라서 UGC웹 사이트에서 어떤 요소가 정보 확산에 영향을 미칠 것인지를 식별하는 것이 필요하다. 이 논문은 Bilibili웹 사이트 기반으로, 비디오 확산 과정에서 영향력있는 요인을 찾아 보려고한다. 주로 소셜 네트워크에 초점을 맞춘 선행 문헌와는 달리, 이 논문에서는 주로 비디오 특성 데이터를 사용하여 비디오 확산에 효과적인 요소를 탐구했다. 첫째, 1 개월 이내에 비디오 조회수 증가 추세 파악했고 비디오 확산에는 세 가지 단계가 있다. 둘째, 각 단계에서 비디오 확산에 미치는 요인이 무엇인지 분석했다. 분석결과 보면 사용자와 콘텐츠의 상호 작용이 높을수록 더 많은 사람들이 동영상을 볼 수 있어 동영상 확산 속도가 향상 될 수 있음을 보여주었다. 이 논문을 바탕으로 웹 디자이너, UGC를 마케팅 도구로 사용하는 사람들 및 UGC 콘텐츠 제작자가되기를 원하는 사용자에게 기본적인 근거를 제공 할 수 있다는 점과 같은 몇 가지 중요한 함의가 소개되었다.Table of content: 1. Introduction 1 2. Literature review 4 2.1 UGC and Bilibili. 4 2.2 Video diffusion in UGC 6 2.3 Hypotheses 9 3 Data and Methodology. 12 3.1 Data 12 3.2 Methodology. 16 4. Analysis results and Conclusion. 19 4.1 Analysis result. 19 4.2 Conclusion 21 4.2.1 Conclusion of daily views. 21 4.2.2 Conclusion of video attributes. 22 5. Implications and limitations 26 5.1 Implications 26 5.2 Limitations. 28 Reference: 29 Appendix: 37 국문초록 43Maste

Open-Source Face Recognition Frameworks: A Review of the Landscape

publishedVersio

Automated Mapping of Adaptive App GUIs from Phones to TVs

With the increasing interconnection of smart devices, users often desire to adopt the same app on quite different devices for identical tasks, such as watching the same movies on both their smartphones and TV. However, the significant differences in screen size, aspect ratio, and interaction styles make it challenging to adapt Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) across these devices. Although there are millions of apps available on Google Play, only a few thousand are designed to support smart TV displays. Existing techniques to map a mobile app GUI to a TV either adopt a responsive design, which struggles to bridge the substantial gap between phone and TV or use mirror apps for improved video display, which requires hardware support and extra engineering efforts. Instead of developing another app for supporting TVs, we propose a semi-automated approach to generate corresponding adaptive TV GUIs, given the phone GUIs as the input. Based on our empirical study of GUI pairs for TV and phone in existing apps, we synthesize a list of rules for grouping and classifying phone GUIs, converting them to TV GUIs, and generating dynamic TV layouts and source code for the TV display. Our tool is not only beneficial to developers but also to GUI designers, who can further customize the generated GUIs for their TV app development. An evaluation and user study demonstrate the accuracy of our generated GUIs and the usefulness of our tool.Comment: 30 pages, 15 figure

Media power and its control in contemporary China: The digital regulatory regime, national Identity, and global communication

In the past decade, the cultural projection of China has become increasingly important to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and to the state in terms of maintaining ideological unity and social stability domestically while at the same time enhancing its soft power amid global competition. Since 2012, with the tightened regulatory framework of the state regulator, the National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA), broadcasters have increasingly engaged in the production and promotion of national discourse, which has embodied the official ideology. At an international level, the Belt and Road Initiative (a global infrastructure strategy initiated by the Chinese government in 2013 that seeks to connect Asia with Africa and Europe to improve regional integration) articulates with China’s policy of deploying soft power to manage international relations. In analysing the shifting power dynamics of the documentary production sector, this thesis aims to capture this moment of transition in China’s broadcasting policy. This thesis takes an ethnographic approach to discuss the policy practices within China’s broadcasting industry. It uses document analysis, in-depth interviews and participant observation as its main methods, to explore the gap between the contemporary policy regime and its implementation in national broadcasters and streaming services, taking into account the interplay between broadcasters, political bodies, producers and audiences. It deals with the contemporary role of Chinese national broadcasters in mediating the public discourse, the collective reimagining of China’s national identity, and the newly-found policy initiative of using state media as a means of nation branding. Cases investigated include China Central Television (CCTV) Documentary, China Global Television Network (CGTN), and the Shanghai Media Group (SMG), as well as co-productions made by CCTV and international media firms, including the BBC, Discovery and the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK). During the fieldwork in China and the UK in 2019, I conducted 46 in-depth interviews with media professionals (including 36 semi-structured interviews), focusing on the challenges and possible solutions of media production and regulation. Tensions emerge not only between the tightening of control of a top-down production framework and the growth of commercial and creative forces, but also between the rise of a national regulatory agenda and a policy goal of global engagement. Situated in an increasingly competitive, globalised cultural sphere, this thesis argues that the state, media institutions and citizens in China are renegotiating a collective national cultural identity to overcome internal conflicts and enhance social stability; in the meantime, the interplay between political, commercial and professional forces continually shapes China’s policy response to global communication, which is now seeking the role of public diplomacy in state media