From ‘moments of madness’ to ‘the politics of mundanity’ - researching digital media and contentious collective actions in China

Abstract

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have become an essential part of contentious politics and social movements in contemporary China. Although quite a few scholars have explored ICTs, contentious politics, and collective action in China, they largely focus on the event-based analysis of discrete contentious events, failing to capture, reflect, and assess most of the political ferment in and around the routine use of digital media in people’s everyday lives. This study proposes a broader research agenda by shifting the focus from contentious events – ‘moments of madness’ – to ‘the politics of mundanity’: the political dynamics in the mundanity of digitally mediated, routine daily life. The agenda includes, first, the investigation of the dynamics underlying the mundane use of digital media, which not only places the use of ICTs in contentious moments into ‘a big picture’ to understand the political potential of mundane use of ICTs, but also reveals ‘everyday resistance,’ or less publicly conspicuous tactics, as precursors of open, confrontational forms of contentious activity. Second, the agenda proposes the examination of mundane experiences to understand the sudden outburst of contention and digital media as the ‘repertoire of contention.’ Third, the agenda scrutinizes the adoption of mundane expressions of contentious challenges to authoritarian regimes, as they allow for the circumvention of the heavy censorship of collective action mobilization. Mundane expressions have thereby emerged as a prominent part of the mobilization mechanism of contention in China. Addressing ‘the politics of mundanity’ will provide a nuanced understanding of ICTs and contentious collective action in China.

Keywords:

• Information and communication technologies (ICTs)
• digital media
• contentious collective action
• the politics of mundanity
• China
• repertoire of contention
• everyday resistance
• experience

Acknowledgements

The author deeply appreciates the comments from Kevin Gillan and Cristina Flesher Fominaya, two anonymous reviewers, Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Jørgen Delman, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, and Susanne Bregnbæk.

Funding

This work was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation [grant number CF14-0385]; S. C. Van Fonden.

Notes

1. This study takes McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly’s definition of ‘contentious politics’ as ‘collective political struggle’ (2001, p. 5), which involves contention, collective action, and politics (also see Tarrow, 2011, p. 6).

2. These events include, , social injustice (e.g. the Sun Zhigang case; Zheng & Wu, 2005, pp. 529–530), political scandal (e.g. the Wenzhou train collision case; Bondes & Schucher, 2014), and environmental activism (e.g. Yang, 2005).

3. Existing scholarship, however, does observe and acknowledge that earlier digitally mediated political struggles affect, facilitate, or even legitimize subsequent contentious movements (e.g. Zeng, 2015). Analysis, nevertheless, remains limited (but, see Liu, 2015b, August).

4. The perception of what refers to ‘mundane’ internet use, however, depends on different social groups (Nielsen, 2013, p.175–176).

5. An example is the orientation of ‘deep Internet studies’ (Yang, 2014b, p. 141).