Sociology

Censorship

Politics

Creativity

Algorithm

The Internet

World Wide Web

Macroeconomics

Political economy

Political science

China

Economics

Production (economics)

Grassroots

Public relations

Computer science

Creative class

Entrepreneurship

State (computer science)

Economic system

Social Media + Society

This article studies the platformization of cultural production in China through the specific lens of Kuaishou, an algorithm-based video-sharing platform targeting second- and third-tier cities as well as the countryside. It enables the forming of an “unlikely” creative class in contemporary China. Kuaishou’s platform business fits into the Party State’s socio-economic agenda of “Internet+” and “Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation,” and is also folded into the state’s demand for cultural censorship and social stability. As we will show, this state-commerce relationship largely shapes Kuaishou’s interface and its affordances as encoded in its algorithm. Nevertheless, Kuaishou enables the diverse, often marginalized, Chinese living outside the urban centers of the country to become “unlikely” creative workers, who have become self-employed creative, digital entrepreneurs. For these “grassroots individuals,” creativity, life, and individuality are constantly mobilized and calculated according to the workings of the platform. This grassroots entrepreneurship, in tandem with the institutional regulation and censorship of the Internet, contributes to the transformation of Chinese economy and the production of social stability and a digital culture permeated with contingency and negotiation.

Platformization of the Unlikely Creative Class: <i>Kuaishou</i> and Chinese Digital Cultural Production

Platformization of the Unlikely Creative Class: Kuaishou and Chinese Digital Cultural Production