Stitching the Campaign Against the Disjunctures of the WeChatsphere

• In Event: Social Media and Political Participation

Abstract

A new approach of studying activism, connective action, suggests that digital media platforms now serve as non-human organizers and substitute formal organizations in connecting and birthing activist collectives. This approach ignores that digital media platforms may be engineered to erect walls and isolate individuals, information, and resources and hence hamper activism organizing. A China-based digital media platform—WeChat—is an example of a closed system that disintegrates more than it connects. Using a case study to examine how the recent generation Chinese Americans organized a campaign in and through WeChat, I demonstrate how individual activists leveraged organizational resources to cross boundaries, bridge gaps, and weave scattered networks of persons and resources together in a unique way of hybrid organizing, i.e., individual-driven organizational participation. This study challenges connective action’s tacit endorsement of automated sociality; I argue that activist communities come from human agents’ interaction with digital platforms’ socio-technical designs, be they connective or disconnective.

Author

• Hao Cao, The U of Texas at Austin