Manufacturing the influencity: short-form video and the politics of visibility in China’s new first-tier cities

• Influencity is defined as the platformised making of urban imaginaries. • Algorithmic curation governs city visibility on Douyin and related platforms. • Local governments collaborate with platforms to steer urban narratives. • Users develop tactics and literacy that shape everyday citymaking. • Findings distinguish China-specific dynamics from generalisable platform logics. This paper analyses the politics of visibility in China’s platform-mediated urbanism, examining how urban imaginaries are co-produced through the contested interplay of local governments, digital platforms, and everyday users. Drawing on multi-sited digital ethnography on the short-form video app Douyin across five new first-tier cities – Xi’an, Chongqing, Chengdu, Hangzhou, and Zhengzhou – this study reveals how the very technical architecture of these platforms governs urban narratives and shapes material urban space. Our findings expose a negotiated field of visibility where three forces converge. First, local governments engage in symbolic governance, strategically collaborating with platforms to craft official city brands while curating public discourse. Second, platforms like Douyin act as powerful arbiters, their algorithmic logics amplifying or muting specific places, people, and stories. Third, users tactically navigate this contested terrain with creative practices – simultaneously performing, appropriating, and subverting dominant narratives through their embodied digital presence. While this tripartite process appears to democratize urban representation, it simultaneously entrenches new forms of spatial homogenization and socio-digital inequality. Ultimately, the paper argues that power in the platform city is exercised not merely through content, but is embedded within the platform’s infrastructures and affordances. We conclude by proposing a framework of “dialogic visibility” that advocates for more transparent and participatory urban futures, urging a critical rebalancing of algorithmically driven amplification with the authentic, plural voices of urban communities.