What counts as knowledge in platform societies? Evidence from affective epistemic mobilities on rednote

What counts as knowledge in platform societies, and how does it circulate through affective and algorithmic infrastructures? This paper addresses these questions by examining Rednote (Xiaohongshu), a Chinese social media platform increasingly used as a de facto search engine among young users. Drawing on Don Ihde’s philosophy of human-technology relations and based on 32 semi-structured interviews and platform walkthroughs, we show how Rednote fosters a participatory, relational form of knowledge circulation anchored in guanxi-based heuristics and emotionally resonant content. Rather than formal expertise, it is these affective and social dynamics that shape what users consider credible, useful, and shareable. In turn, we argue that Rednote exemplifies affective epistemic mobility—knowledge flows driven by relational trust and algorithmic mediation. Yet this shift is not a full escape from surveillance; it spawns a mode of algorithmic counter-conduct, wherein users perform resistant search behaviors that paradoxically reinforce platform governance through participatory co-creation. Rednote thus operates simultaneously as a medium of everyday epistemic agency and a mechanism of algorithmic capture. By extending the notion of mobility to non-institutional, emotionally mediated knowledge forms, this study contributes to mobilities scholarship and highlights how culturally situated infrastructures and practices reshape digital knowledge production.