Worker
KOLs, short-video platforms, and the cultural politics of working-class
formation in China
Zhou Yang
The
past decade has witnessed a historic shift of Chinese capitalism from
competitive to monopolistic infrastructural capitalism, centring around a
digital and high technologies-enabled strategy for the structural upgrading of
the economy, a shift of the growth model and global expansion, accompanied by a
shift in the dominant ideology, notably the revival of nationalism and
patriotism. Situated in this historical conjuncture, focusing
particularly on worker KOLs on short-video platforms, this project explores the
implications of the emerging digital content industry on migrant workers’ class
identity formation to understand the impact of the recent shift in
capitalism on the multi-layered and uneven processes of working-class formation
in China. It will do so first by critically examining how class and class
relations, as it pertains to migrant workers, are represented by the DCI, and
how these representations are shaped by state, corporate and audience power, as
well as producers themselves, discursively and materially. This will be complemented by a micro-sociology
of workers’ daily consumption and interpretation of these contents, with a
focus on how they negotiate various aspects of their class identity in this
process. By
juxtaposing the two, this study presents a cultural politics of class formation
as Chinese capitalism takes a monopolist turn. Considering the current salience
of nationalism, this study will pay particular attention to the impact of
nationalism/patriotism on migrant workers’ class identity formation.
