Game Playing in the Platform Society: A Cultural-Political Economy Analysis of the Live Streaming Industry in China

Abstract

Abstract With the continuing innovation of digital technologies and mobile multimedia terminals, the live steaming industry still has its relatively enormous market share in China. However, the aura of the platform profit-making period seems to glow faintly after 2016, the year regarded as “the booming year of the Chinese live streaming industry”. As the user bonus fades, the growth of the online live broadcasting industry becomes stable, and the industry development returns to rationality. This work poses several questions: in what ways can the survived platforms move forward to seek profits? What type of potential transformations have happened during the monetization for capital accumulation in the digital economy blended with diverse cultures? How can the labor rights of common people be ensured among the persistent chess-play in the virtual live streaming world? By jumping out from techno-optimistic research rhetoric and orthodox political economy discourse, this study stems from a macroscopic perspective of cultural political economy (CPE) with systematical consideration of broader functional factors. Netnography, online in-depth interview, and walkthrough qualitative methods are also conducted to analyze the transformation development in China’s live streaming industry. Results disclose that a gameplay still exists at the core of the dystopian cyberspace, especially residing among different context factors in the platform society, and this academic disclosure can be viewed from cultural and political economy dimension.