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Becoming precarious playbour: Chinese migrant youth on the Kuaishou video-sharing platform

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Min Zhou Open the ORCID record for Min Zhou [Opens in a new window]  and
Shih-Diing Liu
Min Zhou
Affiliation:
Shandong Agricultural University, China
Shih-Diing Liu*
Affiliation:
University of Macau, China
*
Shih-Diing Liu, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Macau, Avenida da Universidade, Taipa 999078, Macau, China. Email: sdliu@um.edu.mo
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Abstract

This article investigates the practices of precarious playbour on Kuaishou, a short-video platform embracing the idea of ‘recording the lives of ordinary people’ and attracting massive numbers of migrant youth to produce creative content as free labour. It examines how young migrants from rural areas in China engage in Kuaishou as a means of realising upwards socio-economic mobility by producing a tuwei (earthiness) culture which has a large fan base. It also examines the way in which they collaborate to cope with precarious conditions lacking guaranteed working time and income, and labour protection. The article attempts to build a conversation with existing scholarship that addresses the ‘exploitation vs. empowerment’ dialectic of labour production. Instead, we address the complexity of digital labour production characterised by a collaborative and symbiotic relationship between social media platforms and users. Through ‘play’ with their followers that generates profit for the digital platform, migrant youth voluntarily accept the uncertain, unpredictable, and risky conditions of digital labour production. They are, however, not passively subjected to platform exploitation but can instead reclaim agency by actively seeking to collaborate with other users to cope with increasing precariousness.

Keywords

J60Z10Collaborative productionKuaishoumigrant youthprecarious playbourtuwei culturezhubo
Type
New aspects of digital labour
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , September 2021 , pp. 322 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2021

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