{"title":"Douyin's playful platform governance: Platform's self-regulation and content creators’ participatory surveillance","authors":"Zhen Ye, Qian Huang, T. Krijnen","doi":"10.1177/13678779241247065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779241247065","url":null,"abstract":"To mediate the tensions between state regulation and content-creator incentives, Chinese social media platforms have developed an interesting practice of using platform official accounts to communicate their rules to the creator community. These accounts anthropomorphize platforms, enabling platforms to represent their regulatory bodies using fictional human characters or animated figures. The phenomenon of platform anthropomorphization in the Chinese context stems from a different ontological understanding of platform governance. The first part of this article discusses the logic of platform governance in China, and highlights a different state–platform relationship in comparison to the US and European countries. In the second part, the article turns to focus on Douyin as a case study to further investigate how Chinese social media platforms establish rules and govern content creators. By analysing Douyin's public-facing policy documents and its platform official account, Douyin Safety Centre, we reveal a mechanism of playful governance.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140693946","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A global approach to studying platforms and cultural production","authors":"R. Prey, Seonok Lee","doi":"10.1177/13678779241244399","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779241244399","url":null,"abstract":"There is a major blindspot regarding our understanding of different structural models of platformization beyond the dominant Anglo-American markets. This article develops a typology of political economic models of platformization by using the case of music platformization. In order to generate such a typology, the article proposes that we start by identifying variables present in any music market around the world. Three different variables are proposed: (1) platform dependence; (2) dominance of ‘global’ platforms; and (3) the degree of platform and recording industry integration. To illustrate how these variables result in structurally distinct models of platformization, the article briefly discusses the cases of South Korea, the Netherlands and Nigeria. In doing so, a framework is provided through which to interpret the experiences and conditions of musicians, and other cultural producers, in diverse platform ecosystems.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140707302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘If it's held dear, it’ll get pushed through’: Transmedia narratives, play cultures, and soft canon in tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs)","authors":"Kellynn Wee","doi":"10.1177/13678779241244407","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779241244407","url":null,"abstract":"Transmedia storytelling is a strategy adopted by media franchises and brands to create participatory story-worlds for their consumers; it incorporates a range of forms, actors, and texts, all of which have varying degrees of narrative authority in determining the events that occur. This article focuses on tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons to show how play cultures in Singapore are shaped by transmedia storytelling techniques. In doing so, it makes two contributions to existing research: first, it shifts scholarly focus from game texts to player practice, showing how communities of play are created through players’ emergent usage of transmedia storytelling techniques. Second, it describes a player practice of soft canon, which I theorise as an approach to shared world-making that prioritises the emotional resonance of narrative details over a positivist accounting of narrative events. The concept of soft canon reveals a new perspective on how communities create and sustain intersubjectively imagined worlds.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140708087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Selling Otherness on YouTube: Digital inter-Asian Orientalism and YouTube monetization system","authors":"Dasol Kim","doi":"10.1177/13678779241240780","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779241240780","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the influence of YouTube's monetization metrics on content creation practices and their reflection of geopolitical and economic factors. Using the case study of “Team Azimkiya,” a Bangladeshi YouTube channel primarily targeting South Korean viewers, the study introduces the concept of “global CPM arbitrage.” CPM, or cost per 1000 impressions, estimates advertising revenue for channels. Global CPM arbitrage characterizes content creators’ strategic approach to leverage varying CPM rates across geographic regions, optimizing their advertising revenue within the YouTube ecosystem. While CPM is often seen as an objective metric, the analysis of Team Azimkiya's strategies reveals its role in constructing audiences and directing higher-revenue viewers. In a platform that exhibits a preference for content from more affluent regions, self-Orientalization emerges as an effective content creation approach. This article argues that this approach can perpetuate the inter-Asian dynamic and the Orientalist gaze.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140713249","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cooptation, hijacking, or normalization? The discursive concession of body politics on Douyin","authors":"Jindong Leo-Liu, Anthony Fung, Han Fu","doi":"10.1177/13678779241239681","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779241239681","url":null,"abstract":"The short-video platform TikTok/Douyin becomes a space not only for individuals to express and articulate their interests, but also for the authorities to negotiate with the public on various ideological boundaries. This article specifically examines a Douyin campaign in which the platform attempts to prescribe a standard of body exposure that falls within the tolerance level of the authorities and, meanwhile, favours users’ interests to gain support. To conceptualize such discursive negotiations and the relevant tactics, we propose the term ‘discursive concession’ to describe the process of compromise by temporarily challenging, obscuring, and rearticulating the discursive boundary, eventually legitimizing the subordinated discourse by aligning it with the dominant ideological logic. By analysing discourses of representative short videos and comments, we identified three tactics of discursive concession: cooptation, hijacking, and normalization. They respectively describe how dominant, subordinated, and middle powers leverage each other to push the discursive boundary forward.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140373494","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jean Burgess, Louisa Bartolo, Joanne E. Gray, Jonathon Hutchinson, D. B. V. Kaye, Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández, Kylie Pappalardo, Patrik Wikstrom
{"title":"‘Diversity’ as multidisciplinary keyword for the politics of cultural recommender systems in global digital media platforms","authors":"Jean Burgess, Louisa Bartolo, Joanne E. Gray, Jonathon Hutchinson, D. B. V. Kaye, Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández, Kylie Pappalardo, Patrik Wikstrom","doi":"10.1177/13678779241239342","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779241239342","url":null,"abstract":"‘Diversity’ is a heavily freighted and multivalent keyword in the global digital media environment. The recommender systems used by platforms are particularly acute sites of development and debate around the political, cultural and technical issues ‘diversity’ signifies. Drawing on a review of computer science publications on recommender systems in media and entertainment as well as a survey of recent advances in media and cultural policy scholarship, this short article performs a pragmatic close reading of diversity in these intersecting fields. We note that attention must be paid to the specific challenges and politics of diversity not only in particular cultural fields but also in local cultural contexts, drawing on examples from music and SVOD platforms to flesh out these questions and the practical possibilities that arise from them.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140372811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Making virtual celebrity: Platformization and intermediation in digital cultural production","authors":"Jingyan Elaine Yuan","doi":"10.1177/13678779241230564","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779241230564","url":null,"abstract":"Focusing on intermediation in cultural production in a digital ecology consisting of multiple platforms mediating simultaneously converging and diverging industries, this study critically engages with the thesis that platforms act primarily as a disintermediation vector in a linear value chain within a single industry. With two empirical cases of intermediation in the emerging virtual celebrity sector – one organizing the recursive loop of prosumption, the other articulating authenticity against technological standardization and overproduction, the study shifts the focus away from questions of labor and agency of individual creators and unpacks the conditions of intermediation in the context of new industrial models of value creation, commodification, and division of labor. The empirical cases demonstrate that the implications of platforms for digital cultural production are paradoxical – while their business models lead to a centralized process of value capture, their flexible organizational forms may afford new distributed patterns of value creation.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139799582","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Making virtual celebrity: Platformization and intermediation in digital cultural production","authors":"Jingyan Elaine Yuan","doi":"10.1177/13678779241230564","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779241230564","url":null,"abstract":"Focusing on intermediation in cultural production in a digital ecology consisting of multiple platforms mediating simultaneously converging and diverging industries, this study critically engages with the thesis that platforms act primarily as a disintermediation vector in a linear value chain within a single industry. With two empirical cases of intermediation in the emerging virtual celebrity sector – one organizing the recursive loop of prosumption, the other articulating authenticity against technological standardization and overproduction, the study shifts the focus away from questions of labor and agency of individual creators and unpacks the conditions of intermediation in the context of new industrial models of value creation, commodification, and division of labor. The empirical cases demonstrate that the implications of platforms for digital cultural production are paradoxical – while their business models lead to a centralized process of value capture, their flexible organizational forms may afford new distributed patterns of value creation.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139859357","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Memetic commenting: Armenian curses and the Twitter theatre of Trump's deselection","authors":"E. Pilipets, Susanna Paasonen","doi":"10.1177/13678779231220397","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231220397","url":null,"abstract":"On 7 November 2020, strange things were happening in the comments to @realDonaldTrump's tweet erroneously arguing that he had won the US presidential election, ‘BY A LOT’. Posting quote tweets and replies in Armenian in tandem with ‘cursed images’, memes, and creepypasta, users engaged in a spam-like trollish intervention, even as Twitter kept removing the said content in real time. Exploring this online incident through various analytical techniques, this article first attends to absurdity and ephemerality within the polarized social media event. Second, it makes an argument for the productivity of digital methods in cultural studies inquiry aiming to understand the temporal, contextual, and infrastructural aspects of memetic commenting. Third, by focusing on the social (media) theatre of Armenian curses, we make a case for the analytical importance of studying materials deemed niche and anomalous in networked exchanges.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139597211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Exploring cultural hybridity, questioning cultural appropriation: Peruvian fans’ responses to Latin tropes in K-pop","authors":"Kyong Yoon, Camila Alexandra Labarta Garcia","doi":"10.1177/13678779231224474","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779231224474","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on qualitative interviews with K-pop fans in Lima, Peru, this study explores how Latin fans think about and negotiate K-pop industries’ citations of Latin pop music tropes. It addresses the ways in which K-pop's practices of citing other cultures are perceived by the audience whose culture is cited. The Peruvian fans in this study suggest that the citations of other cultures observed in K-pop offer versatile entry points for them to easily engage in the cultural genre. For them, K-pop is a novel cultural genre that has become an alternative yet intimate cultural resource, especially compared to hegemonic American pop music. By providing an analysis of Latin K-pop fans’ lived experiences through the lens of cultural hybridity and appropriation, this audience study contributes to the field of transcultural media research.","PeriodicalId":47307,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139607903","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}