The future of influencers

这里是斯坦福大学的《万物未来》，我是您的主持人奥尔特曼。

This is Stanford's The Future of Everything, and I'm your host, Altman.

自从八年前我们启动这个播客以来，它已经成了记录斯坦福大学同事们杰出且富有影响力工作的宝库。

Since we started this podcast eight years ago, it's become an archive of the amazing and impactful work done by my colleagues at Stanford University.

在这个信息爆炸、真假难辨的时代，我很自豪能为您带来法律、医学、工程、科技等领域的专家见解。

In a time when the sheer volume of information available to us can make our head spin and make it hard to determine what's accurate, I'm proud to be able to bring you experts in law, medicine, engineering, technology, and much more.

在美国和加拿大，大多数孩子最向往的职业，可不是当宇航员。

The most popular career path for most kids in The United States and Canada, like kids that like, they don't want to be astronauts.

也不是当消防员。

They don't want a fireman.

这真让人惊讶。

It's amazing.

也不是当医生。

They don't want to be doctors.

他们想当网络红人。

They want to be influencers.

这里是斯坦福工程学院的《万物未来》，我是您的主持人罗斯·阿尔特曼。

This is Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything, and I'm your host, Russ Altman.

接下来几期节目特别精彩，你一定不想错过。

Know, we have some amazing episodes coming up and you're not gonna wanna miss them.

记得点关注，按下关注按钮，这样新节目一上线你就能收到提醒。

So please select follow, press follow so that you get alerted to all the new episodes.

这样你就不会错过任何未来的动向了。

That'll make sure that you don't miss the future of anything.

今天，安吉尔·克里斯汀会告诉我们，刷社交媒体的时候，你得看看背后是谁在买单。

Today, Angelle Christin will tell us that when you're consuming your social media, you might wanna follow the money.

那些制作内容的人背后有经济利益驱动，这会影响他们说的话。

The people who are making that content have some economic incentives and that could affect what they say.

这就是网红的未来。

It's the future of influencers.

今天，我们继续和安吉尔一起，进入‘一分钟展望未来’环节。

Today, we're continuing our segment called the future in a minute with Angel.

我待会儿会问她几个快速问答，她也会给出快速回答。

I'm gonna ask her a few rapid fire questions at the end of our interview, and she's gonna give me some rapid fire answers.

别忘了点关注。

Also, don't forget to follow.

你可别错过那些精彩的后续节目。

You don't wanna miss any of those amazing upcoming episodes.

社交媒体其实挺不错的。

You know, social media can be great.

我天天都在用。

I use it all the time.

我会跟着它关注自己的爱好。

I follow it for my hobbies.

有些人用它来提升专业能力，应对生活中的变化。

Other people use it for professional development, to navigate life changes.

他们也可能关注体育赛事。

They might follow sports.

他们也可能关注政治，或者只是自己喜欢的明星。

They might like politics or just their favorite celebrities.

这都没问题。

It's all good.

但当你刷社交媒体的时候，不妨想想，你关注的那些内容创作者，既有热情，也有经济上的动机。

But as you're consuming your social media, you might want to consider that some of the content creators you're listening to both have passion and economic incentives.

有些人，这可是他们的正经工作。

Some of them, this is their main job.

这没什么不对。

That's fine.

这是他们赚钱的方式，但这会影响他们说什么，以及怎么说。

That's how they make money, but that could affect what they say and how they say it.

安吉亚尔·克里斯汀是斯坦福大学的社会学教授，专门研究数字媒体如何影响社会与文化。

Well, Angyal Christin is a professor of sociology at Stanford University and an expert about how digital media can influence society and culture.

她会告诉我们，她研究过从传统记者到网红的整个生态，发现它们不一样，动机也不同。

She's gonna tell us that she's studied journalism all the way to influencers and they're different and they have different incentives.

安吉尔，你是怎么决定把社交媒体及其文化影响作为你研究重点的？

Angel, how did you decide to study social media and its cultural impacts as part of a major thrust in your work?

已经有一段时间了。

It's been a while.

好吧。

Okay.

我最初是在2000年代末开始研究记者的。

So I started studying journalists, in the late two thousands.

我本身是个关注经济与社会关系的学者。

And then, you know, I was really a kind of like economic sociologist kind of person.

我当时在想，当某个行业的收入突然消失，比如新闻业，会发生什么？

And I was wondering what happens when the revenues of a given industry, in that case the news industry, suddenly disappear, right?

这正是媒体和新闻行业当时经历的情况。

Which is basically what happened to the media and journalism.

随着数字平台和科技公司的兴起，大量广告转向了谷歌、Meta、Facebook这些平台，导致报纸、新闻网站和传统媒体公司的收入骤减。

With the rise of digital platforms and kind of tech company, a lot of advertising moved to Google, Meta, etcetera, and Facebook, which meant that for kind of newspapers and news web sites and traditional media companies, suddenly there was much less money going around.

所以那算是我最初涉足这个领域的方式。

So that was kind of my first kind of foray into it.

当时我的视角主要是经济层面的。

And you know, the angle was really economic.

就是说，当收入突然变化，可用的资金大幅减少时，会发生什么？

It's like, so yeah, what happens when revenues change and suddenly there is just much less to go around?

在资金大幅缩减的情况下，如何维持新闻业这种成本极高的事业？

How do you sustain the kind of extremely costly enterprise that journalism is about with much less money?

但过了一段时间，我对社交媒体的文化层面产生了浓厚兴趣，因为社交媒体不只是经济力量，也不只是关于广告。

After a while though, I really became interested in the cultural aspect of social media and the fact that social media is not only an economic force and it's not only about advertising.

广告在社交媒体中无处不在，我们很快就会再回到这个话题。

So advertising is everywhere in the social media game and we'll certainly come back to that pretty soon.

更重要的是，社交媒体上出现了哪些话语、文化现象和迷因？这些变化又是如何影响我们所有人获取信息、讨论问题和彼此沟通的方式的？

But also about what were the kinds of discourses, the kinds of cultures, the kinds of memes that were emerging on social media and how did that change how the rest of us or all of us were kind of discussing things, accessing information and communicating with each other.

所以过去十七年来，我主要就在做这方面的研究。

And so that's basically what I've been doing for, yeah, like the past seventeen years.

已经过去好一阵子了。

So it's been a while.

那我们再回过头说说，你对记者们面临的经济压力得出了什么结论？

So just to go back to that, what did you conclude about the journalists and their economic stress?

而且据我理解，你当时是亲眼看着这一切发生的。

And especially as I understand it, you were actually watching this happening.

你亲眼见证了它的兴起。

You were watching the rise.

你恰好处于一个——我不会说幸运，但确实是难得的机会，能近距离观察这场巨变的冲击，以及他们是如何应对的？

So you were in a, I don't I would never call it lucky, but you were in a fortuitous position to be able to observe very closely, the response to this big tsunami and and and how did they deal with it?

在我们转向其他话题之前，这种影响有没有留下持久的后果？

Does it have lasting repercussions before we move on to the other topics?

是的。

Yeah.

确实有。

It really does.

我同意。

And I agree.

说实话，过去十五年，新闻行业整体上并不好过。

I mean, I think, you know, talking about the past fifteen years, it's not been a happy time for the news industry, generally speaking.

不过说起来，我个人还算幸运，因为大约在2010年左右，我开始跟着记者做实地调研，那正是社交媒体开始爆发的时候。

But, you know, personally, was kind of lucky in the sense that I started kind of doing field work with journalists circa 02/2010, which is really when kind of social media platforms took off.

我来简单说说我的研究方式。

So a word about the kind of research I do.

我受过社会学训练，你知道的。

I'm a sociologist by training, right?

准确地说，我是个民族志研究者。

And specifically, I'm an ethnographer.

民族志研究是一种方法，起源于十九世纪的人类学。

So ethnographers, it's really a method and a way of doing research that goes back to kind of anthropology in the nineteenth century.

就像当年探险家去偏远岛屿，研究当地原住民的文化——那时候是这么叫的。

Think about explorers going to remote islands and going to study the culture of the natives as you know it was then called.

从那以后，我们显然改变了说法，也多了很多伦理方面的考量。

We've changed the language since then obviously and also a lot of kind of ethical considerations there.

但说白了，我当年就是这么跟记者们打交道的。

But you know, that's kind of what I was doing with journalists.

我花了很多时间待在新闻编辑部里。

So I was spending a lot of time in news rooms.

我采访了大量记者。

I was interviewing journalists.

我就跟他们一起坐在新闻编辑部里。

I was kind of sitting in the news rooms with them.

我盯着他们电脑上在做什么。

I was watching what they were doing on their computers.

我跟踪他们的报道进程。

I was following their stories.

那时候我跟着他们在推特和其他社交媒体上活动，就想弄明白这些巨大变化是怎么影响他们的日常生活和他们对世界的表达的。

I was going on Twitter at the time and on social media with them and really trying to understand how these big transformations were affecting their daily lives and their representations.

所以，主要的发现是，首先，经济结构的重大变化，也就是新闻业商业模式的转变，确实会带来日常层面的影响。

And so, the main findings, well, the first one is really that, you know, big economic transformations that is changing in the business model of journalism also come with kind of day to day consequences.

具体来说，我观察到的是，当时的新闻编辑室——我特别关注的是网络新闻编辑室，对吧？

So concretely, what I saw is that in newsrooms at the time and I was focusing particularly on web newsrooms, right?

也就是记者们在线发布新闻文章的地方。

Kind of where journalists kind of publish kind of news articles online.

他们开始非常关注社交媒体上的数据指标，以及用户访问他们网站时的行为。

They started paying a lot of attention to social media metrics and to what users were doing when they came to their website.

他们花在每篇报道上的时间有多少。

How much time they were spending on each story.

他们是怎么找到这些新闻线索的，对吧？

How they came to the stories, right?

是通过 Facebook 还是 Twitter 找到的？

Did they find them through Facebook or Twitter?

还是直接去 Google 搜索的？

Or did they Google them?

还是他们直接进了网站的首页？

Or did they arrive on the homepage of the website?

所有这些数据都被实时呈现在极其详细的仪表盘和软件系统里，给网络记者使用。

All of this is basically conveyed to extremely granular dashboards and software programs to web journalists.

当时特别有意思的是，我发现很多记者对这些数据简直着了魔。

And what was really interesting at the time is what I saw is that a lot of journalists were kind of obsessed with these metrics, right?

他们整天讨论谁在访问网站、哪篇文章最火、哪篇表现差劲、哪篇在X平台和X平台上爆了。

They kept on talking about, you know, who is coming to the website, which article is the most popular, which article is underperforming, which one is going viral on the X and X platform.

有趣的是，虽然从2026年回头看这不奇怪，但当时是2010年2月，那些在网上流量最高的文章，其实并不是记者们受过训练、被灌输认为最重要的新闻类型。

And what was fascinating there is that, you know, perhaps unsurprisingly since from 2026, but again, this was 02/2010, So kind of articles that were getting a lot of traction and a lot of traffic online were not the most prestigious articles that journalists had been trained and socialized into thinking that was the important stuff of journalism.

举个例子，对传统记者来说，国际新闻、政治，还有文化、艺术，这些一直是报纸里最体面的版面。

So concretely, you know, for traditional journalists, international news, politics, and let's say culture and the art, These are the most prestigious kind of rubrics and sections in newspapers.

这种状况从十九世纪以来就一直如此。

It's kind of always been that way, I mean, since the nineteenth century.

你猜猜，网上最受欢迎的真是这些吗？

Take a guess, was that what was the most popular online?

可能是流行文化和名人吧。

Well, maybe it was popular culture and celebrities.

对。

Yeah.

说白了就是性、丑闻、名人。

So basically sex, scandals, celebrities.

没错。

There you go.

就是这样。

There you go.

还有那种猫迷因，对吧？

And also like cat memes, right?

就是一些可爱的小迷因，能让人会心一笑的那种。

Like kind of cute memes that, you know, would just like make people chuckle.

那时候特别火的是‘生气猫’，就是一只总摆着一张臭脸的猫

At the time, it was like, you know, there was grumpy cat, which was like this cat that had

一个

a

特别

super

明亮的脸

bright face

还戴着一顶小帽子，你知道的。

with like a little hat, you know.

就是这类东西。

Things like that.

列表文章，比如湾区十大最佳汉堡店。

Listicles, the 10 best burger places in the Bay Area.

对。

Yes.

就是这种类型的内容。

Like, you know, that kind of stuff.

对吧？

Right?

这些可都是受过专业训练的记者。

Now these were trained journalists.

他们不是那种想当网红的人，因为那时候‘网红’这个词都还没出现呢。

These weren't people these weren't people who aspired to be influencers you because that wasn't even a word yet.

他们都是接受过正规训练的。

So They these were all trained

都是受过专业训练的记者。

were all trained journalists.

他们中的大多数要么上过新闻学院，要么做过好几段实习，一步步在新闻机构里往上爬，才成为全职记者的。

Most of them had either gone to journalism school or had done like multiple kind internships and really kind of gone up the ladder of newsrooms in order to become full time journalists.

所以我觉得，对他们来说，这就像一场海啸——突然之间，出现了两种完全不同的方式来评判什么是好新闻。

And so, I think that for them it was like a real of tsunami, right, in the sense that suddenly there were these two different ways of kind of evaluating what was good journalism.

一种是传统的方式，讲究获得同行、上级、主编的认可，让别的新闻机构的人说：‘哇，我读了你的报道。’

There was a traditional way which was about getting the respect of your peers, of your superiors, of the editor in chief, getting someone at another kind of newsroom saying like, Wow, I read your story.

我特别喜欢你的作品。

I love your work.

我是说，普利策奖啊。

I mean, the Pulitzer Prize.

对，就是普利策奖。

Pulitzer Prizes, exactly.

这属于传统新闻业那套编辑标准。

Like right, it's kind of traditional journalistic editorial way.

那是一回事。

And that was one thing.

但还有一种完全不同的评判标准，对吧？

But then there was also this other kind of criteria, right?

就是点击量，哪些文章在网上更受欢迎。

Which was traffic and what kinds of articles were popular online.

这两者根本是两码事。

And this was completely different.

所以你能在新闻编辑部看到，人们在这两种成功标准之间来回切换。

And so basically what you could see in newsrooms is people kind of moving back and forth between these two kind of axes of success.

是的。

Yeah.

大家就纳闷了：到底哪一种才算数？

And just being like, so wait, which one what does it mean?

我花了一个月时间做的报道，结果没人点开。

I worked for like a month on the story, but no one clicked on it.

这算好报道还是坏报道？

Is it a good story or a bad story?

反过来，我随便写了个轻松的小稿，讲蕾哈娜在奥斯卡穿了什么。

Vice versa, I just did like a quick fun piece on what Rihanna was wearing at the Oscars.

我这都是编的，但因为有趣，结果火了。

Mean, I'm making this up, And that went viral because it was fun.

内容很轻松。

It was light.

讲的是布里安娜的事。

It was about Brianna.

特别贴合当时的社会氛围。

And it really captured the zeitgeist of the moment.

对吧？

Right?

是的。

Yeah.

那你该怎么平衡呢？

So how do you do?

而且上面还有主编们。

And then on top of it, there were editors in chief.

主编呢，一方面得推出高质量的内容，另一方面还得保证刊物的经济收益。

And so editors in chiefs, the thing is, well, they have to both put out content that's of high quality, but they also have to ensure the economic bottom line of the publication.

没错。

Yes.

为了刊物的经济收益，他们得有足够的网站流量。

And for the economic bottom line of the publication, they have to have enough traffic numbers.

那时候，主要看的指标就是每月独立访客数量，对吧？

At the time, the main metric was the number of unique visitors per month, right?

也就是说，每个月有多少不同的人访问过网站。

So it was the number of unique people who came to the website every month.

广告商关注的就是这个数据。

That's what advertisers were looking at.

所有人都在看这个数字。

That's what everybody was looking at.

所以编辑们其实也很为难。

And so, you know, editors were also kind of stuck.

总不能只做明星八卦或者情色生活方式的内容吧。

Don't want to do only celebrity stuff or sex and lifestyle.

但与此同时，我们还得维持住独立访客的数量。

But at the same time, we have to maintain a number of unique visitors.

所以我就发现，不同编辑部采取的策略差别很大。

So how do we kind of and so what I saw is that depending on the newsroom, people landed on very different strategies.

有些编辑就说了，行吧。

So, some editors were like, Okay.

你明白吗？

You know what?

归根结底，这是一门生意。

This is a business at the end of the day.

我们得让生意运转起来。

We have to make the business work.

所以我们得彻底盯住那些数据指标。

And so, we're gonna really go deep on the metrics.

我们要给每个记者都设定流量目标。

We're gonna put traffic targets for every single visitor, for every single journalist.

我们还会在编辑部挂上实时排行榜，数据不断跳动，让写稿的人时刻感受到竞争和压力。

We're gonna have leaderboards, like big dashboards in the newsrooms with metrics, kind of real time metrics changing kind of all the time, so that writers feel like the competition and the angst, right?

我觉得这些数字会下降。

I think the numbers go down.

作为学者，你可以想象，如果我们对引用次数也这么搞，那简直会是一场噩梦。

I mean as an academic, I think you can imagine if we did that with citation numbers, it would be like an absolute nightmare kind of

某种程度上，我们确实也在这么做。

And to some degree to some degree we do.

某种程度上我们确实也在做，但不是实时的。

And to some degree we do, but not in real time.

是的。

Yeah.

不是实时的，而且我们的工作也不靠这个来衡量。

Not in real time, and it doesn't our job doesn't depend on it.

这也不是唯一的标准。

And it's not the only criteria.

不过话说回来，学术界确实有很多相似之处，但可能有点太专业了。

But again, I mean, I think there are many fascinating parallels with academia, but that's I guess a bit inside baseball.

于是呢，有些新闻机构就全面投入了进去。

And and so, you know, some newsrooms went full in on that.

在这种情况下，记者们往往就觉得：这可不是我受训该干的事儿。

And you know, often what happened in those cases is that journalists were just like, this is not what I trained for.

是的。

Yeah.

我的意思是，我还是想写好故事。

I mean, again, I'm, you know, I want to write good stories.

我特别有感触，因为在过去，你买报纸或杂志，都是整本买回来的。

I'm really struck because in the olden days, when you bought a newspaper or a magazine, you bought the whole thing.

当然，你也可以翻到明星八卦那一页，但前面还有国家大事，编辑们甚至可能根本不知道读者到底买了什么、为什么买。

So, of course, you could turn to the page with the celebrities and stuff, but there was also the front page with the national news, and the editors didn't have even access probably to exactly what people were buying it and why.

但现在这种信息被拆得七零八落，报道也越来越细分，人们可以随意挑选，却未必选的是我们觉得对他们真正有益的内容。

But with this kind of disarticulation and more fine grained reporting, now people can pick and choose and they don't always, you know, choose what we would think would be like perhaps the best for them.

我不是想居高临下，但很多时候，他们选的并不是自己原本以为会选的东西。

I don't wanna be paternalistic, but not the thing that they thought they were doing.

所以我能理解这会造成多大的冲击。

And so I can see how it would be very disruptive.

这不仅涉及钱，还有多巴胺的问题。

This it both money, but also the dopamine?

我敢说，记者们看到自己的帖子爆红时，除了知道能为机构带来收入，肯定也会因为上千万人浏览而感到特别兴奋。

Because I'm sure the journalists, when they get a big viral posting, in addition to knowing that it might make some money for the organization, they must have gotten like just a high from knowing that millions of people were looking at their posts.

完全没错。

A 100%.

关于你刚才说的，我想补充两点。

So two things about what you just said.

你说得非常好。

Excellent point.

很多人问我这项研究是不是新现象，我觉得第一个问题是：这真的算新吗？

So you know, I think the first thing which many people have asked me about that research is like, is this new?

我的意思是，新闻和媒体面临的经济压力一直都有。

I mean, economic pressures on journalism and the media always existed.

这只不过是最新的一波而已。

This is just the latest wave of it.

我的回答是，没错。

My answer is like, sure.

确实有相似之处。

There are parallels.

事实上，你还能找到十九世纪编辑们的回忆录，里面说，你知道的，得给读者他们想要的东西。

In fact, you can find like kind of memoirs from editors in the nineteenth century making like, oh, you know, yeah, you have to give the audience what they want.

你懂我的意思吧？

You know what I mean?

而通常，这意味着名人八卦和生活方式的内容。

And often, that means kind of celebrity stuff and lifestyle stuff.

但我们用这些来补贴那些严肃的内容，所以嘛，也还行。

But you know, we use it to kind of cross subsidize the serious stuff and so you know, it's kind of okay.

我觉得这正是你在说的。

I think that it's exactly what you're talking about.

对我来说，最大的不同在于数字研究里常说的内容拆分，对吧？

The big difference for me is what in kind of digital studies we call the unbundling of content, right?

以前报纸是个整体，所有内容都打包在一起。

And the fact that like with newspapers, it was a bundle.

每份报纸里头啥都有，全捆在一块儿。

Like everything was bundled together.

你办报纸的时候，里头塞了各种东西。

You wrote a newspaper and in it, there were lots of things.

就像你说的，他们确实做过读者调研和市场分析，但说到底，都挺表面的。

And as you say, like most of the time, I mean they did like audience studies and marketing studies, but you know, it was pretty kind of superficial at the end of the day.

大多数人根本记不住内容。

People mostly didn't remember anything.

反正编辑们也没太在意，毕竟自己忙得不可开交。

Anyway, like editors were not really looking at it because here I am, kind of too busy.

数字技术出现后，情况就不一样了——你可以单独点开每一篇文章，这是第一个变化。

What happens with digital technologies is that suddenly, yeah, you can access individual articles kind of on one by one basis, So that's the first thing.

其次，每篇文章都有详细的阅读数据。

And second, have metrics for every single article.

甚至不只是每篇文章，连每一个段落都有数据。

And not even every single every single paragraph in

在文章里。

the article.

对。

Yes.

有些数据是关于用户怎么滚动页面的，让记者们特别沮丧的是，第一，读者平均停留在每篇新闻文章上的时间只有五秒左右，有时候甚至更短，这是最让人震惊的。

Some of the metrics are about how people scroll down and what you find to the distress of journalists is that A, the average time on any given news article is around five seconds, even So less than five that's like number one, right?

第二，大多数人只看第一段，然后就关掉页面了。

And second, like most people look at the first paragraph and then they leave the page, right?

对。

Yes.

对记者来说，这始终是个令人非常沮丧的现实。

It's like for journalists, it's like always this kind of super distressing kind of realization.

但所以说，确实如此。

But so, yeah.

所以我认为，这正是当时发生的主要转变。

So I think that that was really kind of the main kind of transformation there.

关于多巴胺带来的快感，这一点说得太对了。

And that's the point about the dopamine high is so right.

我的书《 Metrics at Work: Journalism and the Contested Meaning of Algorithms 》2020年由普林斯顿大学出版社出版，书中核心观点是，归根结底，记者本质上是传播者。

I mean, I think, at the end, that's kind of a big argument in my book, Metrics at Work, Journalism and the Contested Meaning of Algorithms, which I published with Princeton University Press in 2020, which is that, you know, at the end of the day, journalists are communicators.

他们希望自己的作品有人读。

They want their stuff to be read.

作为教授、研究者，我非常理解这种心情。

Like, I mean, and I have a lot of empathy for that a writer, as a professor, as a researcher.

我也希望自己的作品有人读。

I want my stuff to be read.

所以对他们来说，高流量数据不仅仅是市场压力。

And so, for them, getting high traffic numbers was not just market pressures.

而且那时候我还觉得自己简直是世界之王。

It was also, Oh my gosh, I am the queen of the world.

你懂我的意思吧？

You know what I mean?

我那时候可是站在顶峰。

Like, I'm on top of it.

人人都在读我的文章。

Everybody's reading me.

你知道吗，我直接火了。

I like, you know, I'm going viral.

这种感觉真的让人特别兴奋。

This is kind of exhilarating experience.

所以没错，这确实让人特别有成就感。

And so absolutely, it also makes you feel really good.

而且在新闻编辑部里，你简直就是头号人物。

And also, you're kind of the top dog in the newsroom.

大家都说，天哪。

Everybody's like, oh my gosh.

你是怎么做到的？

Like, how did you do that?

这也太酷了。

This is so cool.

我们也得像她那样。

We have to be like her.

我们得保持淡定。

We have to be like okay.

这真是个完美的过渡。

Well, this is a beautiful segue.

很高兴我们聊到这儿了，因为这正好引出了你最近那本关于网红和社交媒体的书——说不定那些记者后来不知不觉就变成了网红。

I'm glad we went there because this actually segues beautifully into your more recent, I I think, book on influencers and social media because maybe some of those journalists grew up to be influencers, whether they like it or not.

跟我说说你这本新书的视角和立意吧，挺有意思的。我之前也稍微查了下，现在社交媒体上正上演着一场三方角力。

So tell me about the kind of perspective and conceit of this newer work where you're looking at, you know, it's very interesting, and of course I did a little bit of research about kind of a three way dance that is happening right now in social media.

没错。

Absolutely.

对。

Yeah.

所以某种程度上，这其实是我之前研究记者工作的自然延伸，对吧？

So in a way it was really the natural continuation of my work on journalists, right?

作为记者，我关注的是那些传统机构，它们正在缓慢地转型——我不是说它们在崩溃，毕竟记者们依然在做着极其重要的工作，而且已经以各种方式发生了变化，我很乐意多聊聊这个。

As a journalist, it was this kind of established institutions that were kind of slowly I mean I don't want to say collapsing because there is still I mean journalists are doing incredibly important work and they have been transforming in a variety of ways and I'm happy to talk more about that.

但重点其实是这些老牌机构如何应对数字媒体的浪潮，以及它们应对得怎么样。

But you know, was really about these established institutions kind of facing the wave of digital media, right, and how well they kind of reacting to it.

而网红现象，则是这幅图景的另一面：那就是在社交媒体平台上崛起的新媒体生态。

Then influencers, it was well the other side of the picture which is like well, what is the new media ecosystem that has emerged on top of social media platforms, right?

这些社交媒体平台，十五年前根本还不存在。

Social media platforms that weren't around fifteen years ago basically.

现在，网红职业已经成为美国和加拿大大多数年轻人最向往的职业路径。

So what does and now, you know, influencer careers are the most popular career path for most kids in The United States and Canada.

现在的孩子都不想当宇航员了。

Like kids did like, they don't want to be astronauts.

他们不想当

They don't want be

消防员。

a fireman.

这真让人惊讶。

It's amazing.

他们也不想当医生。

They don't want to be doctors.

他们只想当网络红人。

They want to be influencers.

八年前我去古巴的时候，遇到一个小男孩，大概十到十一岁。

I was visiting I was visiting Cuba about eight years ago, and a little Cuban boy, he was 10 or 11.

我问他：长大以后想做什么？

I said, what do you wanna do when you grow up?

他说，他长大想当个YouTube网红。

He said, I wanna be a YouTube influencer.

这是我第一次在任何语言里听到有人这么说，简直惊得我从椅子上差点摔下来。

It's the first time in any language anybody had ever said that to me, and I nearly fell off my chair.

是的。

Yeah.

对。

Yeah.

没错。

Yeah.

我不得不去问了他父母，确认他到底是什么意思，结果真的让人惊讶。

I had to check with the parents exactly what he meant, and then it was just amazing.

所以，当网红确实已经成了潮流，而且在很多年轻人的心愿单上排得特别靠前。

So influencer is definitely a thing, and it's actually very high on the wish list of lots of young people.

完全没错。

Absolutely.

而且不仅如此，当你看看自称是创作者或内容达人的人数时，真是惊人。

And and more than that, I mean, when you look at the numbers of people who are declaring self identifying as influencers or content creators, it's astonishing.

有超过两亿人说自己是内容创作者。

It's like more than 200,000,000 people say that they are content creators.

但这并不意味着他们都靠这个赚钱。

Now, it doesn't mean that they're all making money with it.

也不代表每个人都是全职做这个，但这么多人确实不容小觑。

It doesn't mean that you know, it's a self like that it's But a full time you know, that's a lot of people.

想象一下，差不多有两亿个电视频道在持续发布内容，这说的其实就是这么回事，没错。

Imagine 200,000,000 cable channels basically, kind of broadcasting content because that's kind of what it is, Yes.

这种现象是自然而然发展起来的。

So that kind of emerged pretty organically.

过去六年，我一直做着跟以前采访记者类似的事，只不过对象换成了内容创作者。

And then for the past six years, I've been doing well the same kind of things that I was doing with journalists except that I did it with content creators.

有趣的是，所有这些内容创作活动都发生在网络上。

Now, what's interesting about content creators and about kind of my own kind of study of them is that all of it is online.

相比之下，以前做记者的时候，我总是在新闻编辑部里待着，一起吃午饭、喝咖啡，随便闲逛。

So compared to journalists where I was kind of hanging out in newsrooms, going on lunch breaks, going on coffee breaks, and just like hanging out in the newsroom.

但做内容创作者的研究，我所有的实地工作都在线上完成了。

For content creators, I ended up doing all of my field work kind of online.

这其中有部分是情境使然，比如新冠疫情，对吧？

So part of it is like kind of situational, COVID-nineteen, right?

对，封城期间。

Yes, Lockdowns.

那时候正好是网红经济爆发的时期，大概从2019到2020年开始的。

What was happening at that time, because that's when I started kind of like 2019, 2020, is that that was boom time for influencers.

所有人都待在家里。

Everybody was at home.

我们整天都盯着屏幕。

We were all stuck on our screens.

那时候粉丝数量、用户规模、观看时长，全都疯狂上涨，简直不可思议。

And that's when like kind of the number of followers, the number of users, watch type, all of that was just like crazy growing, right?

所以对他们来说，品牌合作一下子全来了。

So for all of them, they were like, okay, all the brand deals are coming in.

那时候品牌也意识到，我们不再适合在街头做广告了。

That's also when brands were like, Well, we're not going to advertise in the streets.

街上根本没人，对吧？

No one is in the streets, right?

也没人开车到处跑。

No one is driving around.

所以我们把广告搬到线上来。

So we're going to advertise online.

转向社交媒体做推广。

We're going to advertise on social media.

找网红来合作。

We're going to advertise with influencers.

于是，这些数据也跟着飞速增长。

And so suddenly, all of those numbers were also growing.

那时候简直就是淘金热，而我正好在这个时候加入了。

So it was basically like a gold rush And for that's exactly when I came in.

所以说，我觉得自己挺幸运的，赶上了大批创作者爆发的时机。

So again, I feel like I kind of got lucky there that I arrived right when things were exploding for so many, so many, so many creators.

后来我花了很多时间做采访，还跟经纪人合作，成了一个无薪实习生。

And I ended up kind of spending, yeah, doing a lot of interviews, working with an agent, so I became an unpaid intern.

其他实习生都才十八岁，能力比我强多了。

So the other interns were like 18 years old, they were much better than me.

我是那个年纪最大、什么都不懂的实习生。

I was the old intern who like doesn't know what she's doing.

真的吗。

Wow.

我帮一位经纪人打理网红的事务，帮他们谈合作合约。

I helped an agent who was representing influencers and kind of negotiating deals for them.

我还做了一个关于网红收入的定量研究。

I did kind of a quantitative study of how much influencers were paid.

总之，我做了这些方方面面的事，当然还包括分析他们的内容。

Anyway, I did kind of all of these things, and of course, like analyzing their content as well.

这里是《万物未来》，主持人是拉uss·阿尔特曼。

This is the Future of Everything with Russ Altman.

接下来，我们继续与安吉尔·克里斯汀的对话。

We'll have more with Angelle Christin next.

欢迎回到《万物未来》。

Welcome back to The Future of Everything.

我是拉uss·阿尔特曼，今天采访的是安吉尔·克里斯汀。

I'm Russ Altman, and I'm speaking with Angel Christin.

上一段，我们听到了一个精彩的故事，讲的是安吉尔如何亲历了新闻业从社交媒体之前到社交媒体时代的转变，以及这种变化给各大新闻机构带来的压力——既要吸引观众和读者，又要保证内容质量。

In the last segment, we got a fascinating story about how Angelle witnessed the transition of journalism from the pre social media to the social media days and the pressures that put on newsrooms everywhere to both attract viewers, readers, and provide high quality content.

这种转变最终催生了如今社交媒体上的网红现象。

That evolved into the current state of social media influencers.

所以在这段对话里，我想请她深入聊聊，究竟是什么驱动着这些网红，尤其是从经济角度来说。

And so in this segment, I'm gonna ask her to give us a deep dive in what makes influencers tick, especially economically.

别忘了，本段结束时我们会进入‘一分钟未来’环节，我会向安吉尔提几个快速问答，她会给出简短的回答。

Don't forget at the end of this segment, we'll have the future in a minute where I'll ask Angel some rapid fire questions and she'll give me some quick answers.

这就是‘一分钟未来’。

It's the future in a minute.

安吉尔，你之前提到你在疫情期间开始这项工作，当时很多研究都可以在线完成。

So Angel, you were saying that you started your work during the pandemic and that you could do a lot of the research online.

我想先问一下，你有没有觉得有必要深入到这些网红的日常生活中，看看摄像头没开的时候他们真实的状态？

I just wanted to ask to start out, did you feel a need to embed yourself with these influencers where they were sitting when the camera or the videotape or whatever wasn't on?

你觉得这样能真正理解他们的行为模式吗？

Do you feel like you could get a good sense of that ethnography?

毕竟你受过训练，习惯观察人的一举一动。

Because, you know, you're trained, you like to watch people.

我猜肯定有很多非语言的细节，比如表情、动作之类的。

I'm sure there's all kinds of nonverbal cues, blah blah blah.

所以，能说说你是怎么做这个决定的吗？

So tell me about that decision.

这部分肯定和疫情以及当时不得不做的事有关。

Part of it, I'm sure was related to the pandemic and what you had to do.

我觉得这正是最主要的原因。

I mean, I think that's that's the main answer.

说实话，我真希望能亲自去跟创作者们待在一起。

So let me tell you, I I wish I could have kind of embedded myself in person with creators.

作为一个受过传统训练的社会学家，我知道，所有重要的事都发生在镜头之外。

I think that and, you know, I think as this kind of classically trained kind of sociologist, it's like, yes, everything happens off camera.

真正艰难的决定都是在那时做出的。

That's when a lot of the tough choices are made.

那些真正考验人的问题，也都是在那时浮现出来的。

That's when things really kind of hit kind of tough questions.

那时候正处于封锁期。

At the time, it was lockdown.

根本出不去。

Just couldn't get out.

所以，我最后没这么做，这也反过来改变了我的研究问题，这在解释性社会科学里挺常见的。

So, you know, I ended up kind of not doing it and basically kind of that changed my research question in turn, which is classing in kind of the interpretive social sciences.

但你会想，你总得收集一些数据吧。

But you're like, well, you collect some kind of data.

那种情况下，所有数据都是线上的。

In that case, it was all online.

于是我更多地关注了经济激励因素，其次才是社交媒体的结构如何影响网红与观众之间的关系。

So I ended up kind of focusing more on kind of the economic incentives, first And of second, the ways in which the kind of structures of social media shapes the relationships between influencers and audiences.

对吧？

Right?

所以某种程度上，我没有深入去看幕后的实际情况，而是……

So in a way, instead of kind of really looking deep down at kind of what's happening behind the scenes Yeah.

我转而关注了社交媒体生产背后的结构性问题。

I ended up looking more at like, okay, structurally, what's going on with social media production?

所以，这么说来，挺好的。

So, you know Great.

不算完美，但也只能这样了。

Not perfect, but it is what it is.

这个回答很棒。

It's a great answer.

那你能说说这三位关键人物吗？你是怎么理解他们的？这对咱们又意味着什么？

So tell me about these three players and how you came to understand them and what it means for all of us.

好的。

Okay.

首先我想说的是，网红这份工作真的很有趣。

So the first thing I want to say is that, you know, influencers, it's such a fascinating job.

对吧？

Right?

因为我采访的大多数人——我总共采访了一百多位——他们刚开始玩社交媒体时，根本没想着赚钱。

Because most of the people I interviewed, I interviewed more than 100 of them, they came into social media not really wanting to make money.

我的意思是，最早冒出来的那些故事，都是关于热情的，对吧？

I mean at first, the stories that came up were stories of passion, right?