Infrastructuralization of Tik Tok: transformation, power relationships, and platformization of video entertainment in China

Abstract

The article contributes to complicate the issue of ‘infrastructuralization of platform’ through an empirical study on China’s video streaming platform, Tik Tok. It aims at exploring how video streaming platform will transform in its infrastructural process and changing powering relationships between different actors in the platform ecosystem. After scrutinizing its technique features, business model, platform discourse, and power relationships with government, it argues that the infrastructural process of Tik Tok is not only embodied in its transformation from an entertainment community to an integrated platform, including services in e-commerce, online education, propaganda, and tourism, but more in its growing power of indispensability entrenched in our society. The main argument will be elaborated in two layers: first, Tik Tok attains its power on commercial monetization, content distribution, and acquisition of data sources through its infrastructural ambition of building a ‘video encyclopedia’ that can be salable, ranked, and archived. Second, Tik Tok has started to engage in fields of propaganda and tourism for city branding in alignment with central and local government. Tik Tok thereby wins its legitimacy in content management and government in turn plays as a role of stakeholder sharing the dividend from its contribution for state’s development goals. Therefore, the article not only fills in the gap of a case study on infrastructural video streaming platform but also intends to highlight changing power relationships between government and platform in the process of infrastructuralization.