WeChat as an Infrastructure in Contemporary China

• In Event: The Belt Road Initiative: Infrastructural Futures and a Chinese Anthropocene?

Abstract

In recent years, increased attention has been placed on understanding information and communication technologies (ICTs) as infrastructure (Plantin et al, 2018). WeChat is the fifth largest mobile social application worldwide with more than 1 billion monthly active users. The studies presented focus on understanding the symbiotic relationship between WeChat, relevant Chinese governmental policies, and Chinese society. In our research, we explore how WeChat may be considered a new infrastructure in China, as it is not only pervasive but also has become a standard part of life.

Besides being a social tool, WeChat offers functionalities which support Chinese people’s everyday life, such as calling a taxi, paying utility bills, etc. Many Chinese people describe themselves as “living on WeChat (Lawrence 2016).” Our paper is based on data gathered in China through interviews and observations from several studies about WeChat. They consider uses including: (1) The use of WeChat emoji to navigate social and policy constraints, (2) The long-distance communication between parent-child which are coordinated on the many communication media available on WeChat to meet cultural norms amplified by the Chinese One-Child Policy, (3) Youths’ leveraging WeChat to conduct commerce in an effort to assert their independence, (4) A prosperous online gray market that skirts government oversite because of the integration of social networks and payment methods. In this paper, we present findings from these studies and draw the conclusion that WeChat is becoming an infrastructure (Star 1999), while still possessing properties as an interactive social platform.

Authors

• Rui Zhou, Georgia Institute of Technology

• Betsy DiSalvo, Georgia Institute of Technology