Social media and the ordinary: Marginalized voices in neo/non-liberal China

Thirty years into China’s internet development, much recent scholarship has focused on rather daunting forces—big data, algorithmic control, surveillance, and platformization, to name a few. This article centers the “small,” or how social media is articulated to the ordinary practices, pursuits, feelings, passions, ethical decisions, and struggles for voice of people who are socially, economically, and/or politically marginalized. I focus on these processes and practices among marginalized young creatives and domestic workers in a context I call “neo/non-liberal China,” which manifests as an amplification of prior discourses regarding self-responsibilization, happiness, and harmony along with greater social stratification, platformization, repression, and an emphasis on creativity and innovation. The analysis is grounded in theories of “ordinary affects,” or the inarticulable energies, passions, and forces that move bodies, and “ordinary ethics,” or the ethical aspects of practices, choices, and judgments that make up daily life and, thus, selfhood. I argue that centering diverse marginalized individuals’ passions, feelings, and ordinary ethical decisions, as these are articulated to social media, enables deeper insight into their dreams and goals and the challenges and obstacles they face in achieving these. Their experiences also speak to larger ongoing transformations in China.