With many alumni active in the media industry, UIC has produced a legion of star-like media professionals, and 2013 International Journalism graduate Yang Xue is one of them. She obtained her master’s degree in the UK and returned to China to pursue her doctoral degree. Since 2018, she has been working and giving great performances at China Media Group. The following is her story.
Deepening understanding of media industry
Yang Xue is an outgoing girl who never hesitates when it comes to communication. At UIC, she actively contributed to the reporting and editing of the student newspaper, Zhen Zhu Bao, and gained extensive experience. Through four years of study, Yang Xue has developed a relatively complete picture of the international media system and has learned the importance of fact in news reporting.
Yang Xue
After Yang Xue graduated from UIC’s International Journalism Programme in 2013, she went to the University of Southampton in the UK to study for a master's degree in global media management. Once she had obtained her master’s degree, she further pursued a doctorate in journalism and communication (advertisement and media economy) from Wuhan University back in China.
Yang Xue explained that students with international education experience were welcomed to the programme and her experience studying at UIC and abroad at the University of Southampton have greatly helped her apply for her PhD. In addition to that, Yang Xue’s good English language skills and international vision gave her a great advantage when conducting academic research, whether it is citing literature or communicating with foreign scholars.
UIC's Liberal Arts Education encourages students to explore and reach outside the boundaries. Yang Xue understands the importance of the all-round development of talents in the new era. She keeps learning different media-related knowledge, applying the knowledge to practice, and then she gradually clarified her own career development path.
Balancing traditional media and new media
It was during 2018 when Yang Xue was admitted to China Media Group via campus recruitment, and officially began her career as a professional media worker. She rotated jobs at the Finance channel where she worked for the Xinjiang media station, and then the audio-visual new media centre, and finally, appointed into the general manager's office where she was in charge of operating the advertising business of the whole group.
Yang Xue voluntarily chose to go to Xinjiang and participated in various types of news reports, including important visits by permanent representatives and diplomats to the UN’s Geneva office. Some of the stories she covered were the discovery of salt karst landforms in Baicheng county, damage to crops caused by hail in Shaya, etc. Yang Xue overcame the challenges of working and living in Xinjiang. One of the challenges is that there is a time difference that some of the locals use, which is two hours behind the official Beijing time. Besides this, there are also differences in diet that need to be adapted. Yang Xue needed to respect the customs and habits of different regions, ethnicities and religions when interviewing and reporting. As a result, when the news that she participated in was broadcasted on China Central Television’s daily news programme, Xinwen Lianbo, Yang Xue felt greatly fulfilled.
Yang Xue (middle) conducting an interview
Working at CCTV does offer a mix of pressure and motivation. For Yang Xue, the pressure comes from the collision of traditional media and new media thinking, and it is necessary to find a balance; the motivation is that in the work, the horizon and thinking will continue to expand.
In 2019, Yang Xue witnessed the launch of China's first national 5G new media platform called Yangshipin. In January 2020, Yang Xue joined a Yangshipin’s 24-hour live camera broadcasting about fighting against COVID-19 and was responsible for the integration and processing of video resources. The broadcast was phenomenal as it attracted more than 100 million views, and was reposted in large numbers by many international mainstream media and social media platforms, which showed the world how China was fighting against the epidemic since the beginning. Yang Xue also won a special award for her outstanding work performance.
Attaching importance to academic research
In the two years of working in the industry, Yang Xue has not only continued to improve her work skills but also continued to do academic research in a variety of fields including advertisement production, urban image communication etc. Several pieces of her work got published in academic journals. Yang Xue also participates in activities organised by UIC’s Beijing Alumni Association, so she can stay active and still maintain contact with previous classmates. She says that starting from UIC, the students are now fighting for their dreams in all walks of life.
From MPRO
Reporter: Covee Wang
Editors: Samuel Burgess, Deen He
