Paper short abstract:

This paper employs an STS approach to explore the concept of nationhood in the context of platformisation. Through a case study on WeChat, it illustrates how the platform designs afford infrastructures that facilitate the reproduction and registration of nationhood.

Paper long abstract:

This paper argues that, in the era of platformisation (van Dijck et al., 2018), digital platforms can become infrastructures for cultivating and coordinating a collective identity and a sense of belonging, facilitating the imagination of a community (Anderson, 1996). When the infrastructure is embedded with national qualities and is managed within specific national contexts, it affords the (re)production and registration of nationhood through individuals' everyday use. This paper initiates an examination on nationhood through the lens of STS, delineating how mundane platform infrastructures can contribute to engender nationhood.

Focusing on WeChat, the ‘everything app’ in China, I elaborate on how the platform fosters nationhood by orchestrating habitual practices in everyday use. Scholarly attention to China often highlights the state’s techno-nationalist ambitions. By tracing how the platform affords users to participate in social shopping, which integrates shopping with social networking features, I demonstrate how the platform company’s business agendas, such as datafication, monetisation, and ecosystem building, can become infrastructures for constructing a national collectivity. By employing the walkthrough method (Light et al., 2018) and document analysis, I aim to elucidate that nationhood is not merely a state project. It can also be articulated through digital infrastructures that afford individuals to do mundane things.