“I’m an E-Commerce Streamer, Not Influencer” ——The Logistical Struggle for Performing Authenticity on Douyin

This article builds on a growing body of research on content creators and authenticity through examining practices of performing authenticity of a rising labor figures, e-commerce streamers in China. Along with content creation, they interrogate agricultural products, infrastructure networks and their own body to create an authentic rural China. Their invisible labor on logistical level to ensure the data flow contributes to a richer typology on platform labor and global perspective on platformization studies. Based on one-year field work, I investigate how these e-commerce streamers handle logistical challenges from three aspects. Firstly, they select and define the authentic rural products considering the visibility requirements on platform. Secondly, they put extract work to maintain power networks to ensure streaming, like prepare portable electrical generators. Thirdly, they discipline their own body and develop labor degradation to simply the intense streaming activities. Borrow concepts from logistical media studies, this research theorize their labor as logistical struggle. In conclusion, the practice of these e-commerce streamers in marginalized rural China informs the diverse process to perform authenticity in platform economy era and the multiple layers of platform labor across global scales. It also shows how authenticity based on structural inequality, urban-rural divide policy, is commodified and enhances the social status of marginalized social group by enforcing them more invisible labor

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