Articulative labor in assembling protest networks in the disjointed WeChatsphere: Rethinking human and non-human agency in digitally mediated activism

Abstract

Recent scholarship indicates that the rise of networked grassroots protests points to a new mode of organizing activism, connective action. Unlike social movement organization-led collective actions, connective actions are organized by non-human agents – digital networks and platforms – because of the latter’s inherent connectivity in assembling people, information and resources scattered across digital spaces into relatively cohesive protest networks. Yet, not all digital platforms are designed to afford unlimited connections; ‘walled gardens’ and proprietary systems disconnect more than connecting. WeChat, a China-based social media platform, spearheads in engineering an enclosed digital ecosystem, due to China’s political economy. How can protest networks develop in such an insulated environment? This study examines a WeChat-based protest campaign organized mainly by Chinese Americans to illustrate the organizing dynamics on disconnected platforms. Relying on interviews, observation and textual analysis, the findings show that WeChat, instead of acting as a non-human organizer, disorganized the mobilization by impeding the free flow of information and resources. To head off the platform-led barriers, activists performed articulative labor to cross boundaries, bridge gaps and broker resources, which finally articulated the protest network in this digitally disconnective environment. As contemporary digital landscapes become increasingly fragmented, this study not only sheds light on the significant yet hidden articulative labor in networked activism but also prompts us to rethink connective action and other technological deterministic models’ valorization of non-human agency and to reconsider the relationship of human and non-human agency in constituting collective actions and sociality in general.