TY - JOUR
T1 - ‘Hold on to the Green Horse’
T2 - Popular Imaginations of the Health Code and the Cultivation of Algocratic Attunement in China in the COVID Era
AU - Zou, Sheng
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2024/11
Y1 - 2024/11
N2 - At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Health Code played a
decisive role in regulating Chinese citizens’ everyday activities, where
securing a green code became essential. This article examines an
outburst of popular discourses around the ‘green code’ and its homophone
‘green horse’ on a popular Chinese platform, Xiaohongshu, revealing the
multifarious ways in which people imagine and experience this
algorithmic technology—whether as an instrumental task, an object of
romanticization, or a trigger of casual superstition. Such discourses
betray an assortment of dispositions and responses that I call
‘algocratic attunment’, including proactive endorsement, pragmatic
complicity, and convivial nonchalance. Entangled with consumerist
culture, algocratic attunement is quietly cultivated by a host of
private actors on social media, shoring up a sociocultural climate
conducive to algorithmic governance.
AB - At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Health Code played a
decisive role in regulating Chinese citizens’ everyday activities, where
securing a green code became essential. This article examines an
outburst of popular discourses around the ‘green code’ and its homophone
‘green horse’ on a popular Chinese platform, Xiaohongshu, revealing the
multifarious ways in which people imagine and experience this
algorithmic technology—whether as an instrumental task, an object of
romanticization, or a trigger of casual superstition. Such discourses
betray an assortment of dispositions and responses that I call
‘algocratic attunment’, including proactive endorsement, pragmatic
complicity, and convivial nonchalance. Entangled with consumerist
culture, algocratic attunement is quietly cultivated by a host of
private actors on social media, shoring up a sociocultural climate
conducive to algorithmic governance.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85168680806&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/10670564.2023.2251012
DO - 10.1080/10670564.2023.2251012
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85168680806
SN - 1067-0564
VL - 33
SP - 938
EP - 954
JO - Journal of Contemporary China
JF - Journal of Contemporary China
IS - 150
ER -