The disappearance of a Chinese village: How short-video platforms mediatized Clifftop Village’s lifeworld

This study examines how the secluded Clifftop Village rapidly transitioned from a pre-digital society into a mediatized world via short-video platforms. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews, we find that mediatization in this media-deprived rural community was triggered by an incidental news report and unfolded along leapfrogging trajectories driven by the marginalized group’s short-video practices. This process stemmed from complex negotiations between structural forces—China’s centralized governance, expanding digital infrastructure, and platform capital—and the agency of marginalized subjects. It systematically reconfigured villagers’ spatio-temporal order, social relationships, cultural beliefs, and lifestyles, ultimately precipitating the complete relocation of the entire community. Following the dissolution of the physical community, mediatization extended into the affective realm, as villagers began to rely on short-video platforms to anchor their sense of place and collective identity. Ultimately, the case of Clifftop Village demonstrates that rural mediatization cannot be reduced to either technological empowerment or the reproduction of digital inequality, offering a localized lens on the existential condition of marginalized groups under radical modernization.