J Hou
Biographic Data
| ID | 30598 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J Hou |
| GIVEN NAMES | J |
| FAMILY NAME | Hou |
| SIGNATURE | HOU J |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Tokyo |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6799-8261 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Play to earn: An overview of Chinese informal gamer-workers
The prosperity of China’s digital gaming ecosystem would be impossible without the contributions of large numbers of informal gamer-workers through their play-to-earn labor practices. We define gamer-workers as individuals who occupy a vast gray area between casual play and formal employment. Though they come from diverse social backgrounds and are driven by varying motivations, gamer-workers closely tie their gaming practices to the pursuit of a…
The Association Between Power‐Space Congruency and Positive Affect
Although it has been repeatedly demonstrated that the power‐space congruency can facilitate response speed and accuracy, its influence on people’s positive affect remains unexplored. Given the extensive application of power structures in daily life, the present study aimed to understand the relationship between power‐space congruency and positive affect. Experiment 1 ( N = 138) found that the participants had more positive affect toward the power…
Building Metaverses with (or without) AI: Variegated AI Imaginaries in China's National and Local Metaverse Policies
Since 2021, the global 'Year of the Metaverse', the Chinese government has appeared more proactive than its tech giants, treating the metaverse as both a new economic growth engine and a chance to enhance global leadership. Over the past three years, authorities at all levels have issued numerous policies aimed at fostering domestic metaverse industries while maintaining regulatory control. This study systematically reviews these policies, reveal…
A Conversation about On the Edge: Feeling Precarious in China
To Generate Data at All Costs for Traffic Celebrities: The Remaking of Chinese New Poor Through Data-Driven Fan Culture
Among Chinese fans of ‘traffic celebrities’ (liuliang mingxing, 流量明星), to generate excessive data either on digital platforms or in various sales charts so as to inflate certain entertainer’s popularity has become a normalized ritual to demonstrate one’s fan identity. The so-called fandom economy effectively mobilizes fans from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds to consume and participate, thus, generates tremendous revenues. However, when some fa…
Making Ends Meet by Mining on Blockchain: Subalternity, Materiality, and Yearnings of Chinese Amateur Crypto-miners
While public narratives indicate that blockchain is widely used in developed societies among privileged elites, either from socio-economic, ethnic, or techno-cultural perspectives, this study examines how some disadvantaged marginal others, specifically the subaltern shehuiren in China, survive in the increasingly precarious post-socialist Chinese society by engaging with blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Literally translated as “society people”, …
Short Video Activism With and on Douyin: An Innovative Repertoire of Contention for Chinese Consumers
This article examines consumer video activism tactics in China and their impact on Chinese consumers and society. Drawing upon 56 semistructured interviews and a case study analysis of Chinese online consumer protest in 2018, we argue that short-video-activism tactics have become an innovative repertoire of contention for Chinese consumers and Douyin, the 'sister app' of TikTok, has become a real-time updated database of this repertoire. Using Do…
“Selling Poverty” on Kuaishou: How entrepreneurialism disciplines Chinese underclass online participation
The meanings of being “underclass” in China are increasingly ambivalent when various disadvantaged social groups also get access to digital platforms which become more and more influential in not just facilitating people’s economic and cultural practices online but also mediating, distorting, and reshaping these processes. Using critical techno-cultural discourse analysis about how the underclass represent poverty and themselves by creating short…
To Exaggerate Data at All Costs: Data-Driven Fan Culture, Platforms, and the Remaking of the New Poor in China
Among Chinese fans of ‘traffic celebrities’ ( liuliang mingxing 流量明星 ), generating excessive data either on digital platforms or various sales charts to inflate a specific entertainer’s popularity has become a normalized ritual to demonstrate their fan identity. The so-called fandom economy effectively mobilizes fans from diverse socio-economic backgrounds to consume and participate, thus generating tremendous revenue. Although some fans can easi…
Fake Popularity for Real Money: Commercial Astroturfing and Data Bubble on Chinese Digital Platform
This on-going research delineates the constructing of an interlocking ecosystem around popularity magnification on popular Chinese digital platforms, which we refer as “data bubble”. Similar to the bubble in a stock market or in real estate market in different economies where the price of assets substantially exceeds its intrinsic value, we propose “data bubble” as a neologism to describe the phenomenon and ecosystem of manipulating data to aim f…
A platform for underclass youth: Hanmai rap videos, social class, and surveillance on Chinese social media
With increasing influence on everyday social interactions and cultural practices, social media platforms do not just represent but also profoundly reproduce various forms of social inequalities. This essay investigates what role social media have played in the emergence of an underclass habitus among Chinese youth. By focusing on the rise and fall of a participatory hanmai culture on Kuaishou, an underclass-centric social media platform in China,…
Contesting the Vulgar Hanmai Performance from Kuaishou: Online Vigilantism toward Chinese Underclass Youths on Social Media Platforms
Beyond targeting individuals, online vigilantism can comprise significant collective practices among categories of social groups and therefore profoundly be embedded in reshaping the structures of social positions. By tracing the rise and fall of a specific user-generated music videos, hanmai, and the social media platform facilitating its production and circulation, Kuaishou, this chapter explores how vigilant practices including denunciating, s…
Short Video Activism With and on Douyin: An Innovative Repertoire of Contention for Chinese Consumers
This article examines consumer video activism tactics in China and their impact on Chinese consumers and society. Drawing upon 56 semistructured interviews and a case study analysis of Chinese online consumer protest in 2018, we argue that short-video-activism tactics have become an innovative repertoire of contention for Chinese consumers and Douyin, the 'sister app' of TikTok, has become a real-time updated database of this repertoire. Using Do…
Contesting the Vulgar Hanmai Performance from Kuaishou: Online Vigilantism toward Chinese Underclass Youths on Social Media Platforms
Beyond targeting individuals, online vigilantism can comprise significant collective practices among categories of social groups and therefore profoundly be embedded in reshaping the structures of social positions. By tracing the rise and fall of a specific user-generated music videos, hanmai, and the social media platform facilitating its production and circulation, Kuaishou, this chapter explores how vigilant practices including denunciating, s…
Fake Popularity for Real Money: Commercial Astroturfing and Data Bubble on Chinese Digital Platform
This on-going research delineates the constructing of an interlocking ecosystem around popularity magnification on popular Chinese digital platforms, which we refer as “data bubble”. Similar to the bubble in a stock market or in real estate market in different economies where the price of assets substantially exceeds its intrinsic value, we propose “data bubble” as a neologism to describe the phenomenon and ecosystem of manipulating data to aim f…
A platform for underclass youth: Hanmai rap videos, social class, and surveillance on Chinese social media
With increasing influence on everyday social interactions and cultural practices, social media platforms do not just represent but also profoundly reproduce various forms of social inequalities. This essay investigates what role social media have played in the emergence of an underclass habitus among Chinese youth. By focusing on the rise and fall of a participatory hanmai culture on Kuaishou, an underclass-centric social media platform in China,…
“Selling Poverty” on Kuaishou: How entrepreneurialism disciplines Chinese underclass online participation
The meanings of being “underclass” in China are increasingly ambivalent when various disadvantaged social groups also get access to digital platforms which become more and more influential in not just facilitating people’s economic and cultural practices online but also mediating, distorting, and reshaping these processes. Using critical techno-cultural discourse analysis about how the underclass represent poverty and themselves by creating short…
To Exaggerate Data at All Costs: Data-Driven Fan Culture, Platforms, and the Remaking of the New Poor in China
Among Chinese fans of ‘traffic celebrities’ ( liuliang mingxing 流量明星 ), generating excessive data either on digital platforms or various sales charts to inflate a specific entertainer’s popularity has become a normalized ritual to demonstrate their fan identity. The so-called fandom economy effectively mobilizes fans from diverse socio-economic backgrounds to consume and participate, thus generating tremendous revenue. Although some fans can easi…
To Generate Data at All Costs for Traffic Celebrities: The Remaking of Chinese New Poor Through Data-Driven Fan Culture
Among Chinese fans of ‘traffic celebrities’ (liuliang mingxing, 流量明星), to generate excessive data either on digital platforms or in various sales charts so as to inflate certain entertainer’s popularity has become a normalized ritual to demonstrate one’s fan identity. The so-called fandom economy effectively mobilizes fans from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds to consume and participate, thus, generates tremendous revenues. However, when some fa…
Making Ends Meet by Mining on Blockchain: Subalternity, Materiality, and Yearnings of Chinese Amateur Crypto-miners
While public narratives indicate that blockchain is widely used in developed societies among privileged elites, either from socio-economic, ethnic, or techno-cultural perspectives, this study examines how some disadvantaged marginal others, specifically the subaltern shehuiren in China, survive in the increasingly precarious post-socialist Chinese society by engaging with blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Literally translated as “society people”, …
Short Video Activism With and on Douyin: An Innovative Repertoire of Contention for Chinese Consumers
This article examines consumer video activism tactics in China and their impact on Chinese consumers and society. Drawing upon 56 semistructured interviews and a case study analysis of Chinese online consumer protest in 2018, we argue that short-video-activism tactics have become an innovative repertoire of contention for Chinese consumers and Douyin, the 'sister app' of TikTok, has become a real-time updated database of this repertoire. Using Do…
A Conversation about On the Edge: Feeling Precarious in China
The Association Between Power‐Space Congruency and Positive Affect
Although it has been repeatedly demonstrated that the power‐space congruency can facilitate response speed and accuracy, its influence on people’s positive affect remains unexplored. Given the extensive application of power structures in daily life, the present study aimed to understand the relationship between power‐space congruency and positive affect. Experiment 1 ( N = 138) found that the participants had more positive affect toward the power…
Building Metaverses with (or without) AI: Variegated AI Imaginaries in China's National and Local Metaverse Policies
Since 2021, the global 'Year of the Metaverse', the Chinese government has appeared more proactive than its tech giants, treating the metaverse as both a new economic growth engine and a chance to enhance global leadership. Over the past three years, authorities at all levels have issued numerous policies aimed at fostering domestic metaverse industries while maintaining regulatory control. This study systematically reviews these policies, reveal…
Play to earn: An overview of Chinese informal gamer-workers
The prosperity of China’s digital gaming ecosystem would be impossible without the contributions of large numbers of informal gamer-workers through their play-to-earn labor practices. We define gamer-workers as individuals who occupy a vast gray area between casual play and formal employment. Though they come from diverse social backgrounds and are driven by varying motivations, gamer-workers closely tie their gaming practices to the pursuit of a…
Political science (9 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Business (5 works) · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance (4 works) · Advertising (3 works) · Art (3 works) · Asian Culture and Media Studies (3 works) · China (3 works)