#Studywithme: how Bilibili, Kuaishou, Douyin are fostering Chinese students’ education

On a normal Wednesday afternoon, a Chinese student who goes by the virtual nickname of MinnieEight is studying for the national 2020 postgraduate entrance examination. She is working on an exercise book, paired with her Mac laptop, a bouquet of flowers, and a furry toy penguin on a white desk.

From time to time, she turns the page or writes something down. The air is filled with the sound of a crackling fire – which is quite relaxing and helps improve her concentration.

It looks like a normal study scene, but there is an exception: every minute of her afternoon is being live-streamed and followed by more than 10,000 viewers on Bilibili, a Chinese video-sharing platform well-known for its anime, comics, and gaming-centric content (ACG). The picture is nearly still. And MinnieEight? She only reveals her hands while holding a pen on the screen.

She is one of the 600 streamers who showcase their study routine with the hashtag #studywithme on Bilibili. Thousands of viewers are also preparing for their exams, learning English, or just reading quietly, and a virtual companion makes them feel less lonely.

It’s a new feature of Bilibili, which was born to be a platform totally focused on entertainment, with thousands of popular TV shows and movies, especially anime and fantasy series, characterised by the use of danmu, or “bullet comments”, a user conversation system where messages are directly displayed on top of the video as it plays.

Bilibili was previously not parents’ favourite place but has been recently trying to add the idiosyncratic “study community” to itself, supported by millions of education-related videos uploaded by its users ranging from computer science, psychology, finance, foreign language learning and Adobe Suite practice skills.