City Walk as Platform-Native Counter-Mapping
Entangled Resistance and Algorithmic Visibility in Chinese Digital Urbanism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21225513 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Di Xu (0000-0001-5464-9858, Huazhong University of Science and Technology), Yanyu Chen (0000-0003-0652-3139, Huazhong University of Science and Technology) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-16 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Media and Communication (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2183-2439 • E-ISSN: 2183-2439 |
| Publisher | Cogitatio (PUBLISHER • PT) |
| DOI | 10.17645/mac.11021 |
| OpenAlex | W4417360044 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 48 |
As digital platforms increasingly structure how cities are navigated, seen, and valued, urban walking practices have become sites of both algorithmic capture and tactical improvisation. This study examines the emergence of City Walk (城市漫步) in China as a form of platform-native counter-mapping. This user-led spatial practice utilizes digital tools to document, reframe, and disseminate alternative urban narratives. Drawing on digital ethnography, platform content analysis, and interviews in four Chinese cities, the study examines how participants engage in entangled resistance—tactically negotiating visibility algorithms while remaining embedded within platform infrastructures. Rather than rejecting platforms, City Walk participants leverage them to perform affective spatial storytelling, explore non-recommended routes, and archive marginal spaces. These practices are conceptually situated within the literature on algorithmic resistance, everyday spatial tactics, and critical cartography. While some City Walk content is commodified through lifestyle aesthetics and platform branding, others sustain oppositional potential through semantic drift and infrastructural appropriation. By reframing City Walk as a counter-cartographic practice situated within the logics of platform urbanism, this article contributes to broader debates on digital spatial agency, mediated urban practices, and the politics of algorithmically curated visibility
Cognitive reframing · Commodification · Negotiation · Politics · Right to the city · Situated · Urbanism · Visibility · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Spatial and Cultural Studies
Digital Geographies
The Costs of Connection
Too Smart
Affective Publics
Platform Urbanism
If…Then
The Platform Society
Ethnography for the Internet
Cartographies of Resistance
Extra-activism
Algorithmic resistance
Algorithms of Resistance
A Cautionary Tale
Do algorithms have a right to the city? Waze and algorithmic spatiality
Data Epistemologies, The Coloniality of Power, and Resistance
Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook
The walkthrough method
Being a ‘citizen’ in the smart city
Walking as an Aesthetic Practice and a Critical Tool
Regulate, replicate, and resist – the conjunctural geographies of platform urbanism
Platform methods
Platform governance at the margins
Counter‐mapping data science
Beyond Cooptation or Resistance
Using thematic analysis in psychology
The politics of 'platforms
Whose Woods Are These? Counter-Mapping Forest Territories in Kalimantan, Indonesia
Thinking critically about and researching algorithms
Mobility data justice
Algorithmic affordances for productive resistance
A not quite random walk
The politics of algorithmic governance in the black box city
Glitchy vignettes of platform urbanism
Domination and the Arts of Digital Resistance in Social Media Creator Labor
The Rise of the Data Poor
Tiered Governance and Demonetization
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |