Networked Counter-Power to the Automated State: The Recursive Politics of Data-Based Governance in Hong Kong

While the deployment of AI systems and data-intensive technologies has constituted the latest direction in public and urban governance, state-citizen (power) relations and interactions are increasingly infused by algorithmic and automated decision making. However, most critical data studies have focused on AI capitalism and the threats of algorithmic control over users or corporate intrusions in advanced Western democracies. This data universalism thus impedes our understanding of the recent trends and different contours of struggle over data-based governance and automation, especially in non- or semi-democratic settings, where state power may prevail by working strategically with tech companies and augments itself through social datafication.

Focusing on Hong Kong, this paper examines the ways in which tech-savvy citizens (come to) resist and act as a counterforce against the automated power of the state under democratic backsliding. Through an analysis of qualitative data on three prominent occurrences of such distinctive type of technopolitical contention, it explicates how the new (dis)juncture between political contention and social datafication has given rise to episodes of recursive politics that 1) (re)politicise data-based governance, 2) (re)produce local contentious politics and 3) (re)fashion insurgent citizenship. Beyond mere discontent over data (mis)administration and unbridled corporate power, the case of Hong Kong casts new light on the ways in which AI systems and data-intensive technologies become both a locus and a tool of political struggle vis-à-vis automated state power. It also offers nuanced insights into how networked counter-power may arise to simultaneously contests the state’s smart mentality and its underlying political authority, while opening opportunities for counter-public engagement in the digital age.