Digital distinction: class as mediated dispositions in China’s Animal Crossing fever

Abstract

This paper, based on an ethnography of the new gaming culture of Animal Crossing New Horizons in China, contributes to the scholarly investigation of digital class formation. New Horizons is a Japanese console game that became popular among Chinese urban professionals during the pandemic. Following Bourdieu’s framework, we analyze the dispositions and practices of New Horizons players, using the concept of “digital distinction” to define how gamers acquire and display cultural tastes and symbolic practices through competitive and relational engagements mediated by digital devices. The paper argues that contemporary classes are ephemeral dispositions mediated by digital fields materialized through media practices. This argument challenges the “capital-centric” approach to digital divides to better reflect the dialectical value production and transferences in the process of digital class formation. Digital capitalism produces an increasing diversity of digital fields that activate people’s particular dispositions through media algorithms, content design, institutional constraints, and relational spaces.