Platforms, politics, and precarity: Hong Kong television workers amid the new techno-nationalist media agenda

In contrast to the infrastructural properties of Western media platforms aiming at market power expansion, the digital platform model in China is designed and developed with a techno-nationalist media agenda. In the case of Hong Kong, we look into how exactly the platformisation process restructures and interacts with its surrounding cultural, economic, political and social activities. This article contributes to the Creative Labour Studies (CLS) by analysing the intricate linkages between the city’s unique socio-historical, technological and political trajectories and the lived dynamics of television work. Through in-depth interviews with Hong Kong TV workers, we reinstitute the techno-political to the analytical lens of CLS. We posit that the ebb and flow of Hong Kong’s TV industry and its creative labour process are not just guided by economic considerations under global media platformisaton, but also uniquely entangled with its historical legacies, sociotechnical contexts, and political and ideological framework. Our empirics show how the conflicting strategies directed by both the platformised business models and an unprecedented techno-nationalist media agenda generate ambiguity and inconsistency in daily TV operations. The elevated self censorship and loss of editorial autonomy alongside the rapid media platformisation reinforces a normative ‘moralist regime’ creating specific forms of precarity and dissatisfaction among Hong Kong TV workers, undermining the development of the creative industry and a creative career. But the changing techno-political conditions also alter TV workers’ perceived nature, functionality and value of creative work, enacting a self-governed ‘ethical regime’ in their professional practices, and open up new creative opportunities.