Affective News, Affective Labor: Chinese Female “Little Editors” of WeChat Official Accounts in Australia

Abstract

In Australia, WeChat Official Accounts is known as a hub for the production and distribution of affective news, or sensationalized content, among Chinese migrants. This article aims to address: Who/What is responsible for this form of content production on WeChat? Who are the people (re)producing news information for WeChat Official Accounts in Australia? How and why do they engage with such activities for Australia-based WeChat Official Accounts? And how do they shed light on our digital culture, economy, and platform labor? To address the questions, from 2019 to 2022, I conducted 27 semi-structured interviews with Chinese-Australian media professionals at both managerial and staff levels as well as conducted a longitudinal ethnographic observation with more than 200 Australia-based WeChat Official Accounts that translate news stories for the Chinese diaspora. The article argues that in Australia affective news on WeChat is the news story that conveys emotional resonance to Chinese migrant readers; it is predominantly produced by Chinese female little editors who work as affective labor. The employment of affective labor, that is, Chinese female international students or postgraduates, has led to the concentration of precarity, exploitation, and alienation among the groups of Chinese female little editors who are vulnerably exposed to the double exclusion coming from both neoliberalism in Australia’s dominant society and patriarchal normativity embedded in the Chinese migrant economy. The research findings shed light on the intensifying social inequality based on one’s race, ethnicity, gender, and social class that has been imposed and further normalized by digital technologies.