The Intern Diaries: China's Web Celebs

With China’s live streaming industry growing by the day, reporter Amos Roberts went there to examine the country’s new internet celebrities, and meet their fans.

Reporter Amos Roberts filming in China.

Reporter Amos Roberts filming in China. Source: SBS Dateline

In this episode of The Intern Diaries, reporter Amos Roberts talks about , which has become a multibillion dollar industry.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other popular social media sites are banned in China, so many locals have turned to alternative ways on connecting online. This demand is behind the live streaming industry’s rise, which saw it .

“The key element of live streaming is that it is an amateur sort of entertainment medium, it’s extremely democratic in the sense that anyone can do it, it’s democratic in a way that most of China isn’t,” Amos tells Dateline intern Rangi Hirini.

He says several streamers are making good money, and treat it an a profession; “these are people who sort of learnt over the years what things work, what things don’t, how to attract more presence, how to address the audience, how to look, how to like yourself, what sort of jokes to tell.”

Listen to Amos’ chat with Rangi here:



Watch the full episode here:







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Dateline is an award-winning Australian, international documentary series airing for over 40 years. Each week Dateline scours the globe to bring you a world of daring stories.
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1 min read
Published 27 September 2017 4:41pm
Updated 27 September 2017 5:17pm
By Rangi Hirini
Source: SBS Dateline


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