Conformity and Obfuscation: Infrapolitics of Impression Management under Data-driven State Surveillance

• In Event: Unpacking The “Datafied” Society: Shifting Politics of Seeing and Knowing - II

Abstract

In China, the growth and expansion of data-driven surveillance infrastructure make the data collection and processing on citizen’s financial and non-financial activities (social credit system), health status (Covid-19 health code system), and more. The recent implementation of the state-owned platform XueXi QiangGuo (hereinafter, XueXi) has expanded the China’s surveillance capabilities to the domain of political communication and engagement. In particular, individuals who work in the public sector and members of the Chinese Communist Party network have been mandated to actively engage in XueXi. Individuals’ use of the system is quantified, tracked, and thereby evaluated by the state. Through the observation and interviews with 28 active XueXi users, we seek to investigate citizens’ everyday interactions with the platform and how individuals perform impression management online under state surveillance for political communication. Through Erving Goffman's dramaturgical lens, we uncover individuals' everyday socio-technical practices of conforming to and obfuscating surveillance as ways of impression management to the state. Our work unpacks how these practices help us rethink both individuals' relations to data-driven surveillance practices and state surveillance in China. We contribute to STS scholarship in three ways: 1) foregrounding users' calculation, complicity, and agency and challenge dominant thinking of China's state surveillance being oppressive and top-down and the ever-shifting infrapolitics of individuals under surveillance as termed by James Scott, 2) presenting a different understanding of impression management with the context of increasing datafication in surveillance practices, and 3) providing an alternative narrative to understand the state-citizen relationship in the context of state surveillance.

Authors

• Alex Jiahong Lu, University of Michigan

• Yuchen Chen