Internet media employees: High education but poor economic situation

China's internet media employees are defined by high education, long work hours and low job satisfaction, according to recent research results.

The 2016 report on internet media workers in China, conducted by web portal sina.com and Fudan University, was released on Tuesday at the Sina Future Media Summit in Beijing.

Media mavens and scholars gathered at the summit to discuss new challenges and opportunities brought by new technologies such as artificial intelligence.

According to the report, 70 percent of internet media employees are under the age of 30, 94.1 percent have a college degree or above and most believe that they are at the lower-middle level of society.

Working 8.5 hours a day and 5.1 days a week on average does not promise good economic conditions. Most internet media employees said that being unable to afford a house is their biggest source of pressure. Fifty-one percent are living in rented houses.

"The internet media workers are facing life dilemmas, that they can neither afford a home financially, nor having enough time to spend with their family members," said Zhou Baohua, a professor at Fudan University, who conducted the research.

Another source of pressure comes from the challenge of new technology: most internet media workers lack necessary understanding of virtual reality and AI. The most recognizable skills among them include information sorting, writing and interviewing rather than programming and analyzing customer needs.

Nearly 38 percent of internet media employees said they do not plan on leaving the industry within five years.

"Now many media [organizations] are using robots to write stories, will journalists be replaced by AI some day?" said Zhou Xiaopeng, Sina's editor-in-chief.

"My answer is no. The future [of] media will be a combination of computer technology and man's thinking mode. We should believe in the power of information technology as well as the power and value of human," he said.