Making creativity governable through dual optimization: Platform operators as cultural intermediaries in China’s social media entertainment

Abstract

This study examines platform operators (POs) on Chinese social media entertainment platforms as cultural intermediaries who govern creativity from within the platform. Drawing on interviews with POs and participant observation on a livestreaming platform, the study conceptualizes the POs’ work as “dual optimization,” an operational governance mechanism that renders creators and content measurable and intervenable, thereby making creativity governable. Empirically, POs evaluate creators, implement tiered management, and provide logistical support to sustain productivity, while simultaneously recalibrating content standards, providing stage-specific guidance, allocating traffic, and routinizing production via trend curation, campaign orchestration, and creative tools. Dual optimization is embedded in a deeper orientation toward metric optimization, which standardizes aspects of PO labor. Yet POs retain situated agency. POs manage cultural uncertainty beyond algorithmic control, cultivate creators’ relational dependence, and mediate among regulatory, market, and sociocultural demands. By foregrounding these upstream operational functions, the study highlights how POs institutionalize top-down cultural governance under platformization.