The “traffic is king” mindset has become the dominant logic in platform-based content production, profoundly influencing the production, dissemination, and consumption of content. Photo: TUCHONG

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While the early internet was characterized by optimistic visions of a “participatory culture,” today’s content creators are motivated not only by involvement but by the pursuit of public approval and heightened visibility. To go viral, content creators are not only expected to innovate and keep ahead of trends, but also to guide users in a way that aligns with platform-specific traffic algorithms, thus integrating into a broader “traffic game.”

‘Traffic is king’

The logic of online traffic is closely related to both information flow and symbolic consumption, where content is the raw material which generates traffic. Under this logic, both content creators and products start by gaining visibility on platforms, leading to the dissemination and consumption of content or personas. To attract more traffic and revenue, many creators join Multi-channel Networks (MCNs), which provide industrialized, professional, and polished content production. The “traffic is king” mindset has become the dominant logic in platform-based content production, profoundly influencing the production, dissemination, and consumption of content.

However, content consumers remain real individuals behind their connected devices. Despite advanced technical and algorithmic tools for audience prediction available in the platform era, accurately forecasting user preferences remains challenging for content creators. While issues of paid or fake traffic exist, content producers in the social media entertainment industry still fiercely compete for users.

Competition for traffic among content creators is not a new phenomenon. In the mass media era, media had the power to set the agenda and control visibility. Before the application of various statistical data management techniques, content visibility and its distribution were determined by authorities with cultural expertise. 

However, as technology advances, content production has been influenced by a range of measurement techniques, such as audience data statistics, circulation numbers, and viewership metrics, which can be seen as precursors to digital reputation systems. 

Scholars have noted that in platform-based content production, algorithmic logic is gradually replacing editorial logic. In this context, competition for traffic is primarily a quest for data. Driven by new metrics, data transforms from a seemingly objective indicator to a measure of an individual creator’s value and success.

The term “traffic” comes from the transportation industry, where it refers to the number of vehicles and pedestrians passing through a specific area in a fixed period of time. As the internet emerged, the term was applied to online forums, describing the number of users visiting a site and the number of pages they viewed. Common metrics include the total user count, page views, time spent, and active duration. 

On the surface, traffic is directly related to data and digitization, referring to the amount of data generated online by devices connected to the network. As data serves as the raw material of the platform economy, it highlights the importance of platform algorithms. How algorithms amplify, suppress, allocate, and recommend content directly impacts traffic volume. 

Compared to ordinary users, content creators’ economic returns are directly linked to traffic, motivating them to study the platform’s traffic algorithm mechanisms and technical characteristics. Content creators engage with fan communities, continually monitoring, sharing, and tracking results, speculating on and inferring the operational rules of algorithms, leading to a kind of “algorithmic gossip” about platform mechanisms. 

Researchers have also found evidence of content creators “testing” algorithms, and through collective efforts, content creators’ understandings become increasingly structured, ultimately forming a “social knowledge of algorithms.” Such studies deepen our understanding of the relationship between content creators and platform algorithms. However, algorithms are just one of the platform’s key technical frameworks; the competition for traffic does not solely rely on specific technologies. 

Scholars have thus concluded that the combination of algorithmic logic and human logic is the norm in platform practices, while traffic distribution may also be constrained by specific political and social contexts, as well as the platform’s development goals and strategies.

Tension between creativity and data

As creators compete for traffic, the tension between traditional content production’s pursuit of creativity and the pursuit of data metrics is further amplified. The creative practices of platform content production are filled with ambiguity and controversy, where creators often find themselves torn between speaking to the masses or pursuing niche markets, prioritizing content quality or catering to “metric logic,” and being more authentic or enhancing self-promotion. These goals share both contradictions and similarities, leaving creators in a quagmire.

The ability to attract online traffic, and the quantity of that traffic, remains a primary concern for many creators. Many content creators describe crippling phases of “traffic anxiety.” This anxiety about traffic and how to interact with algorithmic mechanisms is unavoidable in contemporary platform-based content production. However, it does not mean that content creators are wholly subservient to metric logic. 

For one thing, metric logic has its limitations. Many surveyed creators say that even with the availability of relevant backend data and multidimensional analyses of content dissemination effects, predicting user preferences remains very challenging. Data can summarize the past and explain the present, but it cannot accurately predict the future. Many creators described cases when content they believed would be popular failed, while sometimes content created without much thought unexpectedly went viral.

When we asked creators what value they provide to their audiences, they identified an emotional value and practical value. Emotional value includes universal feelings such as joy, anger, sadness, and resentment, as well as companionship, shared growth, excitement, absurdity, and anxiety. Practical value is described as a “tool-like” value, primarily referring to the useful skills and knowledge that users gain from creators, such as beauty tips, fashion advice, reading recommendations, and fitness routines.

Data metrics are likely to conflict with the long-standing habits of cultural creation and the intuition of content creators. Interviewees agreed, metric logic is one of many factors to consider in platform-based content production, not the whole picture. When reflecting on the “creative spark” for their content, the inherent properties or quality of their work remained the strongest response. When asked whether they are “obsessed” with studying algorithms, neither creators nor institutions reported engaging in algorithmic predictions, experiments, or research, as we had anticipated. Creators agreed that, ultimately, success hinges on professional expertise and niche operations; obsessive study of algorithmic mechanisms is not a sustainable strategy for growing audiences. 

Initially, researchers presumed this perspective arose from creators’ inability to decipher ever-changing algorithms, but when this question was brought to algorithm engineers, they provided similar answers, confirming “good content will naturally attract attention and thus generate good traffic.” Generally, high-quality content is more likely satisfy the greatest common denominator and continuously attract traffic.

High-quality products are key

As the number of content creators skyrockets, researchers have begun to ask how quality content is produced—from the creators’ perspective. Like a pendulum, the emphasis has shifted from valuing technology back to valuing content. The once loud slogan “content is king” is being reiterated once more. For operations, algorithmic logic is the underlying logic of the platform; above this foundational layer, content forms the building blocks.

Research indicates that content creators and the institutions behind them do not blindly follow metric logic; instead, they integrate content creation logic based on a comprehensive understanding of data, aiming for higher-quality content production. Here, “high-quality” is not the authenticity of high art or traditional art as seen in past cultural industry studies, but rather the production of superior social media entertainment content. Most creators participating in this study were micro-influencers within specific niches, rather than traditional celebrities. They often possessed certain professional skills, such as in fitness, literary critique, or niche humor, indicating that they have some cultural or technical capital.

The creators interviewed for this study were predominantly young individuals born after 1995, whose extensive experience with social media allowed them to blend traditional film and television creation logic with social media logic to develop their personal careers. Those with substantial capital at their disposal were the minority. Creating viral content that aligns with specific platforms requires strong personal charisma, cultural and technical skills, and often, well-functioning teams and institutional support. The presence of these institutions has made entertainment content production on platforms more systematic and even industrialized, leading to detailed divisions of labor within content creation. Institutions control the entire process from content creativity, packaging, dissemination, marketing, to consumption, ensuring a satisfactory cultural product “pass rate,” and improving its quality. To attract traffic quickly and in larger quantities, institutions usually invested heavily in review processes, traffic experiments, and targeted promotions.

This prompts a reimagining of the significance of traffic in contemporary platform-based content production. First, traffic has a use value in statistical data metrics as it effectively captures users’ attitudes, emotions, and behaviors, and tracks creators’ popularity, discussion levels, dissemination, update frequency, type of content, and willingness to produce content. As various platform technologies mature, these statistical processes feature clear calculation procedures and visual representations. Traffic also carries cultural symbolism; creators pursue traffic because it signifies content visibility and cultural influence. Generating traffic is seen as a way to potentially access, influence, and understand public sentiment, making it a crucial representation of social cognition, social awareness, and collective action. Traffic reflects not just the volume of data but weighs cultural value, becoming a multifaceted entity that balances data, culture, and relationships.

Zhang Shichao is from the School of Journalism and Communication at Chongqing University; Dai Shaofan is from the School of Journalism and Communication at Renmin University of China.

Edited by YANG XUE