I started my phase two intervention in this week: test two different forms of online participatory archiving through two social platforms – using Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) as a test in the public sphere and using WeChat as a test in the private sphere for the campaign The Wandering Camera.

Test on Xiaohongshu

On the Chinese social platform Xiaohongshu, I created a new social account for the project. Xiaohongshu is featured as a lifestyle platform that inspires people to discover and connect with a range of diverse lifestyles, which has developed the accurate algorithm in pinpointing and gathering different kinds of communities. The image of a sheep robot rather than myself as the account owner was set initially to help the account appear less biased in terms of operation and easier to approach for everyone. 

The account would be testing on several types of posts and find how people interact with them online. There would be five types for the time being:

• Introduction of academic theories and practice of participatory archiving worldwide. I would like to share some secondary research I did during the past few month regarding participatory archiving. Ideally these secondary research could be combined with the project, to reveal the meaning of this project.
• Archivists’ stories. Since I have collected a certain number of stories from city archivists during the summer, Xiaohongshu can work as a platform which allows a higher exposure of these stuff than an independent website.
• Different topics on city culture for discussions. During the period of the first intervention, I did not make conversations fixed in a certain range of topics, but allowed all talks to develop in a free flow. However, such practice would work more effectively when being face-to-face. Luckily, through analysis of the transcripts, I have found some topics reflecting some shared concerns of the archivists, which are potential to be discussed further.
• Small campaigns. No fixed content. I have currently added a post announcing the start of the first campaign The Wandering Camera which will take place in the private sphere.
• Memes, or some entertaining content to attract more flows to the home page.

Although Xiaohongshu is the platform which most caters to this project in China for the time being, it still has some negative influencing factors.

First, the platform has been continuously commercializing in the past two years, growing into one of the most competitive e-commerce platforms in China. As it is devoting more resources in e-com businesses, ArchiWenzhou, a non-profitable and culture-based project, might be hard to grow rapidly.

Second, the accurate algorithm might lead to information cocoon. Since my target is to raise citizens’ awareness of the existence of rich cultural assets of Wenzhou, the project should at first seek for a higher exposure to Wenzhou citizens who do not pay much attention to the city culture. However, the algorithm might lead to my target group’s limited access to the content.

Third, it has a strict regulation on users’ outflow. There is a risk of being blocked when the account makes disclosure of the email address or the link of the project website within the platform, which makes it more difficult to build further connections with online participants from Xiaohongshu.

The Wandering Camera

The second part of my phase two intervention will be a combination of online community operations and real-life interactions between people. This could be viewed as a small experiment: use a disposable film camera and pass it from person to person, and find how people use this device to capture the interesting views in Wenzhou.

If the journey of this camera could start from a person who has a good grasp of photographic skills, this experiment might have a higher opportunity to make success. Therefore, while the idea for this campaign was in its infancy, I posted a moment on WeChat and asked who with expertise could help in starting the experiment:

Out of my expectation, a photographer who took part in my first intervention responded to me in the first place, and discussed with me how to further increase the likelihood of success.

Finally, we decided to utilize an online shared document for participants to mark the locations where they take the photos, as well as create a WeChat group chat as a private sphere to track the progress of the camera’s journey, encourage participants’ interactions and collect the participants’ feedback afterwards.

And the campaign was named The Wandering Camera.

The Moment of Uncertainty

In the last unit, I have already been aware that this project might take the risk of non-sustainability if I shift all of my focuses to online platforms, because most of the experiences and reflections I got from face-to-face activities would no longer be applicable when being online. However, confined by my current location, this might be my only choice in these three months if I hope to test more.

I am somewhat pessimistic about progress at this stage, since it is not easy to make everything in control. The posts in the social account might trigger seldom discussions, and the camera might be lost halfway as well… I am facing the moment of uncertainty.

I just wish myself luck!