‘Re-coupling site’ of social media and the workplace in digital nomadism: Chinese female workers’ self-produced vlogs with class and gender connotations

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

ABSTRACT We observe that a new, minor genre of resistance has emerged among female worker vloggers. Whether working in manufacturing plants or on construction sites, these female worker vloggers actively produce videos about the laughter and tears of their work lives. Their workplaces constitute the central source of their daily vlog production. We develop a concept of ‘re-coupling site’ to explore how these female vloggers transform conventional workplaces into novel digital sites, simultaneously turning themselves into digital laborers, to articulate their voices, perform their work identities, and enact their daily resistance. This concept helps induce a new interpretation of place and placed experience to fashion our understanding of working-class digital nomadism in the Global South context, where digital and cultural production can happen at work. Perhaps more importantly, the class and gender experiences articulated in their vlogs have been translated into collective practices that potentially foreground the formation of class-based online communities.