In 2019, the Chinese authority launched a new communication and networking platform for CCP cadres: the app, called ’Study (Xi) and Strengthen the Country’ (Xue Xi Qiang Guo, 学习强国) is very much an example of what scholars call ‘gamification': the use of game elements in context that are not games. On the app, users collect so-called study points through their activities, which improves their ranking vis-a-vis other users on the app’s leaderboards and allows them to earn rewards like tickets to popular attractions or free mobile data. Some organisations also used employee scores in their annual performance assessments or tied them to potential salary deductions in the case of sub-optimal scores. Not too surprisingly, cadres at all levels ended up using the app, for collaborative work, to demonstrate their commitment to party ideology, and to assure positive work assessments. Many learned quickly how to ‘game’ this system. How should we study such digital artefacts and the looping socio-technical interactions that they create? In this talk, Florian Schneider will discuss gamification as an example of complex, networked politics, and he will introduce two modelling techniques for getting a handle on these processes.

Florian Schneider, PhD, Sheffield University, is Chair Professor of Modern China at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies. He is managing editor of Asiascape: Digital Asia, director of the Leiden Asia Centre, and the author of three books: Staging China: the Politics of Mass Spectacle (Leiden University Press, 2019, recipient of the ICAS Book Prize 2021 Accolades), China’s Digital Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 2018), and Visual Political Communication in Popular Chinese Television Series (Brill, 2013, recipient of the 2014 EastAsiaNet book prize). In 2017, he was awarded the Leiden University teaching prize for his innovative work as an educator. His research interests include questions of governance, political communication, and digital media in China, as well as international relations in the East-Asian region.