Director of the Regional Office for Europe of Xinhua News Agency Wang Chaowen held a lecture titled “New Media: Challenges and Opportunities in Globalized World”, which was held at the Faculty of Political Science in Sarajevo.
He said that the mobile Internet technology is developing rapidly, which has brought an unprecedented media revolution.
He added that newspapers, magazines, news agencies and other traditional media are facing the same challenges posed by the media based on the Internet, and that many of them have begun the transition to new media and experimenting with the integration of media according to market demands and new habits of readers.
At a lecture organized by the FBiH News Agency (FENA) and Xinhua News Agency, with the support of the Bosnian-Chinese Friendship Association, Wang Chaowen pointed out that young people and even the older, when it comes to China no longer receive news from traditional media, but via the Internet, and that they no longer rely only on computers but on mobile devices such as smartphones.
According to him, 2014 was crucial for the development of China’s new media, which in this country gained the status of primary media and have become a new impetus for social development, because they generate online culture and allow the population to communicate with government representatives.
He said that the number of their users is constantly increasing, and that they have built a specific relationship with the Chinese society, since China has the largest audience for the new media with more than 600 million Internet users and 1.2 billion mobile phone users, and a huge market is opening with the development of mobile technology in rural areas.
“I believe that as we develop new media we cannot abandon traditional media, which cannot be abandoned, because while we are going through a transition we perform the integration of traditional and new media.
The essence of journalism remains the same regardless of the format, because a journalist has to go to the event, process the material and content and distribute it in the traditional or new format,” explained Wang Chaowen.
He said that Xinhua is China’s state news agency founded in 1931, which today has 30,000 employees in 31 offices in China and 180 offices abroad, and since 2008 it has been in the process of strategic transition and integration of traditional and new media.
Wang Chaowen said the agency is currently building the largest online media group led by the internet portal xinhuanet.com and it is developing its publication business, which is made up of 30 newspapers and magazines printed in 10 million copies.
He further explained that the general news service of Xinhua provides services in text format (5,000 news reports a day), photography (1,000 per day), audio and video format, online, TV channels and SMS 24 hours a day in Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish , Arabic, Portuguese and Japanese.
He added that many other news agencies have referenced Xinhua as their source and vice versa, because the agency has agreements with some 100 news agencies around the world including AFP, AP, and the FBiH News Agency – FENA.
(Source: Fena/ photo klix)