An Ethnographic, Processual Study of Platformized Lives: WeChat in China as a Case Study

Description

Since the late twentieth century, the Internet has undergone an epochal rise, particularly during the past decade. Around the world, from public services and work to leisure and household chores, everyday life matters are increasingly handled through Internet-based platforms, giving rise to what may be called platform societies or platformized lifestyles. WeChat in China has been one such exemplary phenomenon: originally designed for social networking, WeChat has evolved into an all-encompassing platform that facilitates online payment, food delivery, ride-hailing, and other services—in other societies, these functions and services usually have separate platforms. This anthropological study therefore asks: How has WeChat become so integral, structurally and culturally, in today’s Chinese society? Existing scholarship characterizes a platform society as an “infrastructuralization of platforms” and a “platformization of infrastructures.” Such characterization tends to focus on the technological features of platforms, treating them as static technological systems. Yet, technological features alone cannot explain the digital platforms’ differences in configuration, degree of embeddedness or cultural impacts. Importing insights from anthropological studies of infrastructure and myth and science and technology studies, this proposed research conceptualizes digital platforms as an evolving sociotechnical system, an open-ended process, and a discursive force, shaped by various kinds of local, regional, and transnational actors. On this basis, the study plans to address the main question from two aspects. First, it will explore how WeChat as a sociotechnical system has changed over time. To do so, this study seeks to develop a processual approach to unravel how various forces—technological, social, political and financial—and their interactions have shaped WeChat’s evolvement and how ordinary people of different ages and socioeconomic backgrounds have become regular users of WeChat for different purposes at critical junctures. The “processual” approach highlights how contingencies, setbacks and failures can be just as important as strategic planning and intentional action in shaping the platform’s evolution. Second, drawing on an analytical framework of modern mythologies, this study will explore how platforms as a cultural force are shaped by, and reproduce, existing cultural frames regarding life, risk, science and technology, and national development. Combining multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork with extensive document analysis, this research will expand the horizon on the lived experience of platform users of different kinds, enrich the body of empirical studies on the social and cultural impacts of digital technologies, and contribute to the scholarship on platform societies by developing an analytical approach pertinent for comparative studies.