2026/06/03 by Chuan Ma, Desheng Wang · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance #China's Global Influence and Migration #China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations
paper · doi:10.1080/00131911.2026.2663824
openalex publication_date 2026/06/03 · openalex created_date 2026/06/04 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a public middle school, this article examines how rural migrant children use platformized media (short-video apps, social media, and mobile games) under restrictive school governance to negotiate marginalisation and resist school norms. Against dominant accounts that cast online engagement primarily as distraction, the analysis shows how specific genres of online content, peer circulation, and platform affordances provide resources for tactical classroom resistance, alternative recognition, informal learning, and aspirational self-fashioning, while also exposing youth to algorithmic visibility hierarchies and precarious forms of attention. The findings highlight the ambivalence of platformed resistance: agency is exercised within, and partly captured by, commercial infrastructures and disciplinary regimes that shape what can be seen, valued, and monetised. This study contributes to sociological understandings of digital inequality, youth resistance, and working-class educational experience in the platform era.