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Accepted Paper:
Surveillance and propaganda. The digital construction of Xinjiang and the formation of political subjectivities in the Uyghur diaspora.
Rune Steenberg
(Palacky University in Olomouc)
Youtube videos narrating Xinjiang abound. The region is being re-created online in polarised utopian and dystopian versions respectively. In these digital worlds, the political subjectivities of thousands of diaspora Uyghurs are being shaped. This paper tracks this dynamic between screen and person.
Paper long abstract:
The number of Youtube videos on Xinjiang abound. Young, Uyghur, female, political influencer Anniguli alone has uploaded more than 800 since 2018 in support of PRC policies. Uyghur activists in the US and Turkey have uploaded a corresponding number harshly criticising the same politics. The picture they draw of Xinjiang could not be more different: a utopia and dystopia respectively. Meanwhile, all reactions to these videos – comments, likes, reposts or the choice not to comment, like or repost – are monitored by the Chinese state on the one hand and the Uyghur diaspora community on the other. All Uyghurs in the diaspora are very aware of this while they follow or are active on social media as this is only place to keep contact with and gain information about their homeland. Through the dynamic of seeing and being seen, of reading and acting they become drawn deeper and deeper into these digital realities. This decidedly shapes their speech and action on- and off-line. Based on on- and off-line fieldwork, this paper tracks two extreme sides of the digital construction of Xinjiang and the political subjectivities they help create within the Uyghur diaspora in Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Germany and Sweden.