Participant Observation: Over a continuous 19-month period (January 2023–July 2024), the author conducted immersive participant observation within three prominent creator mutual-aid groups on Douyin and Weibo, adopting an empathic insider role (Madison, 2019).

This approach involved active engagement in daily interactions, tactical discussions, and content coordination activities, enabling deep access to bloggers’ informal practices. Unlike distant observation, this method allowed for real-time documentation of how algorithmic constraints were navigated, how platform policy changes triggered tactical adaptations, and how community norms emerged organically.

The observation covered 312 distinct activities, categorized into:

Content Production Workflows: Tracking algorithmic timing of posts, A/B testing of thumbnails, and use of trending hashtags.

Audio recordings were transcribed verbatim, back-translated, and analyzed via constructivist thematic analysis (Braun an Clarke, 2006). Coding identified 78 initial codes (e.g., “algorithm-gaming,” “community-as-resistance”), grouped into themes mapping to RQs (see Table 2). Triangulation included methodological (observation vs. interview), data source (revenue tier comparisons), and member checking with six participants.

Participants were screened for demonstrated use of ≥3 tactical categories:

Algorithm-Gaming: Artificially inflating engagement via mutual-aid groups.

Boundary Work: Circumventing content restrictions through coded narratives (e.g., using “rice” for money).

Data Inflation: Deploying bots or click farms to simulate organic growth. This multilevel screening ensured participants embodied the “informal manipulation” phenomenon under study, moving beyond self-reporting to observable practices.

To mitigate sampling bias, we integrated:

Methodological triangulation: Comparing observed behaviors with interview claims.

Temporal triangulation: Tracking tactics across platform policy shifts (e.g., post-“Clean Net” campaigns).

Member checking: Preliminary findings were validated by 3–5 participants, enhancing interpretive accuracy.

Conceptual Operationalization: The core concepts of “informal manipulations” and “digital craftsmanship spirit” were systematically operationalized through observable indicators. Informal manipulations were identified through three behavioral categories: algorithm-gaming (e.g., mutual-aid groups), boundary-testing (coded language), and metric inflation. Digital craftsmanship spirit was tracked through linguistic markers including craft metaphors (“polishing content”), expressions of spiritual sustenance, and community-building narratives.

Thematic analysis followed Braun and Clarke’s (2006) iterative process:

Familiarization: Immersion in memos and transcripts.

Code Generation: This study has extracted 78 codes (e.g., “algorithmic resistance,” “community-as-infrastructure”).

Theme Development: Grouping codes into dialectical themes (e.g., “co-opted resistance”).

Reflexive Refinement: Using researcher journals to contextualize findings within power dynamics.

This rigorous approach addresses reviewer concerns by clarifying methodological coherence, researcher positionality, and conceptual operationalization—key gaps in critical digital ethnography.

The following are the results of thematic categorization based on 78 initial codes extracted from the critical ethnographic study and semi-structured interviews. These codes were ultimately grouped into 7 core themes, which clearly outline the practices, strategies, conflicts, and adaptation patterns of Chinese young bloggers in the platformized environment (see Table 3).

Moving beyond established frameworks of affective labor (Nazari and Karimpour, 2022) or hope labor (McNeill, 2021), which often emphasize the exploitation of emotional capacity or the investment in future potential, this study identifies digital craftsmanship spirit as a practice focused on present-moment self-cultivation and community-building. This concept is empirically grounded in creators’ narratives and practices that blend productive labor with confucian-inspired values of moral and personal development.

The digital craftsmanship spirit manifests not in opposition to algorithmic labor but through it. Blogger-E, a knowledge creator, described the process as “polishing content,” a term imbued with craftsmanship connotations of patience and mastery. He stated, “It’s not just about chasing views. For me, it’s about building a ‘digital garden’ where I can refine my thoughts and connect with a like-minded community. This process is a form of ‘spiritual sustenance’ amidst the pressure to perform.”

This pursuit of “spiritual sustenance” through creative practice represents a significant departure from Western narratives of pure resistance or burnout. It is a strategy of productive adaptation that generates value for the platform while providing the creator with a sense of purpose and identity that mitigates the alienation of metric-driven labor. The value derived from this practice, as Figure 3 illustrates, is multidimensional, encompassing not just economic but also social, informational, and self-actualization values, with the latter being a key differentiator from hope labor.

The second argument is that informal tactics are not merely resistance but are co-constitutive of platform evolution in Chinese ecosystem. Platforms like Tiktok and Bilibili are not static entities, they adapt their algorithms and policies in response to widespread creator tactics.

A prime example is the practice of “hugging warming” (It refers to a mutual assistance practice among bloggers, where they help one another increase metrics such as the number of views, likes, comments on their respective works, as well as the popularity of their accounts.). While observed as a form of collective resistance to algorithmic opacity, it simultaneously generates immense data value and trains the platform’s AI (Ouvrein, 2024; Verhoef et al., 2022). Blogger-C explained: “We have groups where we instantly share new posts to get those first likes and comments. This ‘jump-starts’ the algorithm’s recommendation mechanism. Without this, even good content might sink.” This practice directly feeds the platform’s need for engagement metrics, making resistance a resource for platform growth.

From the perspective of social interaction, mutual aid digital games such as “hugging warming” enable bloggers to inadvertently construct a digital social network atop the platform, which encapsulates both the direct transfer of genuine social relationships and the newly emerged interactions. These social relationships can be solidified by the ongoing evolution of platform-centric social behaviors. The nature of social relationships has shifted from tangible communities to virtual network platforms (like the blogger E, etc.). Hence, bloggers become the “drivers” of social connections within short video media, motivated by the realization of creativity and engagement. The informal practices of these bloggers further compel platforms to initiate environmental maintenance protocols, resulting in the establishment of community norms which serve as a form of shaping mediated community relations.

These practices within the unique context of Chinese “disciplined innovation” (Zhou and Liu, 2024). Bloggers must navigate a dual constraint: the market-driven logic of the platform and the state-led ideological framework.

This forces a specific form of compromise that goes beyond Western content. Bloggers internalize the need for “positive energy.” Blogger-D, a travel vlogger, stated: “I never talk about sensitive topics. It’s not just about rules. It’s about understanding the ‘mood’ of the platform. Content with ‘positive energy’ gets promoted. It’s an unspoken rule we all learn to work with.”

This is not mere compliance but a tactical internalization of state discourse to ensure survival and visibility. The practice of digital Craftsmanship spirit thus unfolds within strictly defined boundaries. Creators cultivate their “gardens” and find “sustenance,” but they do so by carefully tilling soil that has been pre-approved by both capital and the state. This finding challenges purely market-centric analyses of platform labor and underscores the critical importance of integrating Chinese political and cultural scholarship to fully understand the local manifestations of global platform dynamics (Vera et al., 2019; Deng et al., 2023).

In short, the experiential value of informal practices in creation by young bloggers can be depicted in four dimensions: economic value, social value, informational value, and self-actualization value.

This study set out to investigate how young Chinese bloggers navigate platform constraints through informal manipulations and what these practices reveal about the broader dynamics of platformization (Cho et al., 2024). The finding make three central contributions to the literature on digital labor and platform studies.

First, This study introduces and empirically ground the concept of digital craftsmanship spirit. It moves beyond established frameworks such as affective labor (managing emotions for a wage) and hope labor (working for exposure and future potential) by capturing a more holistic, culturally-nuanced practice of self-cultivation. Whereas affective and hope labor often center on exploitation and futurity, craftsmanship describes a present-focused strategy of finding meaning, community, and skill mastery within the alienating conditions of platform labor. It is a form of productive resilience that helps explain why individuals persist in precarious creative work, not solely due to economic necessity or false hope, but also through the active creation of intrinsic value. This concept provides a new lens for understanding the sustainability of creator economies, particularly in non-Western contexts.

Second, this analysis strengthens the theoretical framework for studying platformization by fusing affordance theory with the “content as infrastructure” perspective (Verhoef et al., 2022). We demonstrate that creator tactics are not just about using platform features (affordance) but about actively repurposing and reassembling them into a grassroots infrastructure that supports their survival. This informal infrastructure—built on mutual aid, data gaming, and community norms—exists in a dialectical relationship with the formal platform infrastructure, simultaneously depending on it and subverting its control mechanisms. This integrated lens offers a more coherent and dynamic model for analyzing the co-constitutive nature of platform evolution.

Third, this study explicitly position Chinese “disciplined innovation” not merely as a context but as an active agent in this dialectic. The findings show that platform governance is a hybrid of state ideological goals and market capitalist extraction. Creators must innovate and resist within a tightly disciplined field, leading to a unique form of platformization that is shaped by both bottom-up tactics and top-down political control. This challenges the applicability of purely Western, market-centric models of platform studies and underscores the necessity of incorporating geopolitical and cultural specificity into global theories of digital labor.

The findings also yield actionable insights for multiple stakeholders.

For Creators: This study validates and articulates the informal practices many creators already employ. Understanding these tactics as a form of “craftsmanship” can provide a framework for communities to consciously foster more sustainable and mutually supportive practices, mitigating burnout and alienation.

For Platform Operators: The dialectical nature of informal manipulations presents both a challenge and an opportunity. While practices like “hugging warming” can be seen as gaming the system, they also generate immense value and train algorithms. Platforms could engage more transparently with creator communities to develop fairer revenue-sharing models and co-design features that reduce the need for covert resistance, leading to a healthier ecosystem.

For Policymakers: In China and similar contexts, recognizing social and economic value of the creation economy is crucial. Regulations aiming to maintain ideological control should also consider the precarity of digital labor. Policies that provide creators with better social safety nets and more transparent content governance frameworks could help harness their innovative potential while ensuring greater stability.

This study has several limitations that chart a course for future research. First, while our purposive sampling captured diverse voices, it underrepresented creators from lower-tier cities and those who have failed or quit, potentially overlooking important dimensions of platform precarity. Second, the ethnographic focus on tactics provides deep qualitative insights but cannot quantify the prevalence of these practices at scale. Future research should combine large-scale surveys with computational methods to track the evolution of informal tactics across platforms.

Furthermore, the concept of “digital craftsmanship spirit” warrants further investigation. Comparative studies between Chinese and Western creators could explore the cultural specificity of this concept—is it a uniquely Confucian response, or a universal strategy manifesting differently across cultures? Longitudinal research is also needed to examine how craftsmanship spirit evolves over a creator’s lifecycle and in response to major platform algorithm updates.

In conclusion, this study moves beyond simplistic narratives of exploitation and resistance in the platform economy. Through a robust critical ethnography, we have revealed the complex reality where young Chinese bloggers, through their informal manipulations, become unwitting co-architects of the platform ecosystem. Their practices of digital craftsmanship spirit represent a profound adaptation to algorithmic alienation, one that seeks meaning and community within the machine. Ultimately, the Chinese model of platformization is forged in the tension between this grassroots agency and the overarching framework of “disciplined innovation.” By taking these informal practices seriously, we gain not only a more nuanced understanding of the Chinese digital landscape but also a new set of theoretical tools—centered on dialectics, infrastructure, and artistry—for critiquing and reimagining the future of creative labor globally.