Platformed Politics: Distributed Governance in Chinese Digital Fandom

• In Event: Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 1. Governance, censorship, & regulation

Abstract

While scholarship often examines digital communities within the confines of a single platform, this paper reveals the emergence of a sophisticated, fan-driven political system that operates across multiple platforms. This system constitutes a form of distributed governance with its own political architecture, technologies of power, and methods of subject formation. Moving beyond analyses of platform-specific logics, this study asks: How do communities strategically leverage the distinct affordances of a fragmented digital ecosystem to construct and exercise sovereign power?
Drawing on iterative qualitative analysis of interview data with Chinese celebrity fans, I demonstrate how this cross-platform governance strategically allocates distinct political functions to different platforms. In the digital landscape of China, Baidu Tieba serves as the "constitutional archive," providing historical precedent and legitimacy for community norms; Weibo functions as the public "battleground" where gamified hierarchies extract monetizable labor, but also as a "sovereign territory" (Super Topic) for public-facing mobilization; The anonymous forums of Douban operate as an "intelligence agency" for producing and vetting damaging information (“black material”). Finally, private messaging apps like WeChat serve as an "inner sanctum" for elite strategic coordination.
This research contributes to a critical understanding of "platformed belonging" by showing that users are not merely subjected to algorithmic control. Instead, they are sophisticated political actors who reconfigure technological constraints into a coherent infrastructure for collective action. Ultimately, this paper reframes digital fandom not as a passive subculture, but as a powerful model of decentralized governance, demonstrating how communities build political sovereignty within the very architecture designed to manage and monetize them.

Author

• Wenjing Xu, Duke Kunshan University