Social constructivist account of the world’s largest gay social app: Case study of Blued in China

Miao, Weishan; Chan, Lik Sam

doi:10.1080/01972243.2020.1762271

Cited by 32 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Nonetheless, techno-nationalism is not the determinant of platformization in China. Existing research has demonstrated how the desire for commercialization (Miao & Chan, 2020; Z. Zhang, 2021; Zhao & Lin, 2021) and internationalization (Miao & Chan, 2020; Jia et al, 2019) are essential for platforms’ developmental trajectories.…”

Section: The Political Economy Of the Platformization In Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

The politics of platform power in surveillance capitalism: A comparative case study of ride-hailing platforms in China and the United States

Chan

Kwok²

2021

Global Media and China

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This article uses a comparative case study of two ride-hailing platforms—DiDi Chuxing in China and Uber in the United States—to explore the comparative politics of platform power in surveillance capitalism. Surveillance capitalism is an emerging economic system that translates human experiences into surveillance assets for behavioral predictions and modifications. Through this comparative study, we demonstrate how DiDi and Uber articulate their operational legitimacy for advancing their corporate interests and visions of datafication in the face of legal uncertainty. Although DiDi and Uber are both “sectoral platforms” in urban mobility with similar visions of datafication and infrastructuralization, we highlight that they deploy different discursive legitimation strategies. Our study shows that Uber adopts a “confrontational” strategy, while DiDi employs a “collaborative” strategy when they need to legitimize their data and business practices to the public and regulatory authorities. This study offers a comparative lens to examine the social and political dynamics of platform firms based in China and the United States and, therefore, contributes to understanding the various aspirational logic of platform thinking in different political contexts.

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Section: The Political Economy Of the Platformization In Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

The politics of platform power in surveillance capitalism: A comparative case study of ride-hailing platforms in China and the United States

Chan

Kwok²

2021

Global Media and China

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“…However, visions are also embedded in particular technologies and pushed by other actors than the state, in particular information-technology (IT) companies and individual entrepreneurs (e.g. Leong, 2018;Miao and Chan, 2020;Plantin and de Seta, 2019;Wang, 2020a). In the literature to date, comparatively little attention has been given to the role of IT entrepreneurs as drivers and shapers of the Chinese digital society.…”

Section: Visions and The Trajectory Of The Chinese Internet: A Case Smentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Wu and Yun, 2018) and individual entrepreneurs and platforms (e.g. Leong, 2018;Miao and Chan, 2020;Wang, 2020a;Yu, 2018), and how companies through their policies and platforms shape user behaviour (e.g. Chen et al, 2018;Jia and Han, 2020;Stockmann and Luo, 2017).…”

Section: Visions and The Trajectory Of The Chinese Internet: A Case Smentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Geng Le, which is the pseudonym he has been using on the internet since the late 1990s, has like Jack Ma quite a surprising and unusual background for an IT entrepreneur (e.g. Hernández, 2016;Larson, 2014;Miao and Chan, 2020;Wang, 2020a;Zhang, 2014). Geng Le has no technological/computer or business background; instead, for almost twenty years, he worked as a policeman in a small city in Hebei province.…”

Section: Personal Life and Company Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“Crazy Jack” and the “Gay CEO”: Visions, Entrepreneurship, and the Chinese State in the New Digital Economy

Svensson

2021

Journal of Current Chinese Affairs

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This article analyses the visions, careers, and companies of Jack Ma of Alibaba and Geng Le of Blue City. Jack Ma is a well-known business leader and visionary, whereas the less well-known Geng Le only began to receive more attention since launching a successful gay dating app in 2012. The article focuses on the personal narratives and visions of these two IT entrepreneurs. It provides new perspectives on the role of individual entrepreneurs in relation to the Chinese state’s global ambitions and vision of creating a “strong internet country.” It argues that the commercialisation and platformisation of the Chinese internet, and the growing transnational nature of Chinese IT companies, serve to make them more, not less, co-dependent of the state and its visions. The internet’s emancipatory potential is today increasingly conflated with consumption, and online spaces and social relations are subject to both commodification and datafication.

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“…Same-sex partner-seeking platforms, of which Grindr is the (in)famous market leader with users in 234 countries worldwide (Grindr 2020), have enjoyed particularly high adoption by gay, bisexual, and other men who seek sex with men. Membership of these platforms has become the norm not just throughout wealthy cities in North America and Europe, but also surprisingly widely around the world, including within sociopolitical cultures popularly perceived to be sexually conservative (Dasgupta 2017;Miao and Chan 2020) and economically marginalized settings in the global South (Birnholtz et al 2020;Bryan 2019). This rapid and widespread shift to online, smartphone-enabled partner-seeking generates significant implications for offline gay neighborhoods, compounded by the economic impact of the 2020-21 coronavirus pandemic on what are, in many cities, already struggling queer commercial and community venues.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Let’s (not) Go Outside: Grindr, Hybrid Space, and Digital Queer Neighborhoods

Miles

2021

The Urban Book Series

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Developments in mobile digital technologies are disrupting conventional understandings of space and place for smartphone users. One way in which location-based media are refiguring previously taken-for-granted spatial traditions is via GPS-enabled online dating and hook-up apps. For sexual minorities, these apps can reconfigure any street, park, bar, or home into a queer space through a potential meeting between mutually attracted individuals, but what does this signify for already-existing queer spaces? This chapter examines how smartphone apps including Grindr, Tinder, and Blued synthesize online queer encounter with offline physical space to create a new hybrid terrain predicated on availability, connection, and encounter. It is also a terrain that can sidestep established gay neighborhoods entirely. I explore how this hybridization impacts on older, physically rooted gay neighborhoods and the role that these neighborhoods have traditionally played in brokering social and sexual connection for sexual minorities. Few would deny that location-based apps have come to play a valuable role in multiplying opportunities for sexual minorities. However, the stratospheric rise of these technologies also provokes questions about their impact on embodied encounter, queer community, and a sense of place. A decade on from Grindr’s release, this chapter evaluates the impact of location-based media on gay spaces and reflects on what the increasing hybridization of online and offline spaces for same-sex encounter might mean for queer lives of the future.

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Social constructivist account of the world’s largest gay social app: Case study of Blued in China

Cited by 32 publications

References 28 publications

The politics of platform power in surveillance capitalism: A comparative case study of ride-hailing platforms in China and the United States

The politics of platform power in surveillance capitalism: A comparative case study of ride-hailing platforms in China and the United States

“Crazy Jack” and the “Gay CEO”: Visions, Entrepreneurship, and the Chinese State in the New Digital Economy

Let’s (not) Go Outside: Grindr, Hybrid Space, and Digital Queer Neighborhoods

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