Paper short abstract:

Drawing on extensive fieldwork within a leading Chinese social media company, the paper reveals how various IT workers act as nodes within a complex information infrastructure that supports the distribution of user-generated content.

Paper long abstract:

This paper challenges the prevailing narrative that algorithms alone govern the distribution of user-generated content from social media databases to user interfaces. Drawing on extensive fieldwork within a leading Chinese social media company, it foregrounds the vast information infrastructure, diverse forms of informatic labor, and distinct work practices that collectively underpin content flow.

The study highlights three critical types of informatic labor: content moderators in Sichuan who manually delete “risky content,” engineers at headquarters who design algorithms to trace content as it moves across different departments, and in-house content editors in Beijing who manually correct algorithmic glitches. By examining these practitioners' various labor practices, the paper reveals how they act as nodes within a complex information infrastructure that supports the distribution of user-generated content.

Although these IT practitioners subtly influence content circulation through their own cultural preferences and company-assigned roles, their impact on moderation is conditioned by their interrelationships with other heterogeneous elements within the system, such as user flagging, risk-detection programs, media censorship, and more. By employing what I term backstage ethnography, this paper illustrates how infrastructures are formed by everyday practices, foregrounding the hidden labor they rely upon as well as their contingency on social structures.