FSS-DSOC Luncheon Seminar #6: “How Social Media Facilitates Underground Economy Governance: The Case of Petty Smuggling in Macao”, by Ms. Haiyan YANG

Using data collected through interviews, fieldwork and cyber-ethnography, this article examines how social media have been used to solve the problem of goods scams by smugglers in Macao’s petty smuggling industry. We find that, on the one hand, the traditional underground economy governance mechanisms of reputation, hostage-taking, violence, and third-party protection were revamped into online background checking, digital ID information sharing, cyber violence, and platform penalties; On the other hand, social media provided new form of governance: real-time process monitoring. This study not only provides the latest empirical evidence on how petty smuggling takes place between Macao and Mainland China, but also enriches our understanding of how social media have reshaped the underground economy governance mechanisms in the digital era.