Two-Way Embedding and Resilience Building: The Driving Forces, Effects, and Adaptive Pathways of “Platform-Based Campus Governance”

Abstract

Social media platforms have redrawn the terrain of university governance in China. Students embed themselves in the governance ecosystem through these platforms, and their strategies have moved well beyond individual rights advocacy toward participation in public affairs. University authorities, for their part, have begun stepping into online student communities on their own initiative — power no longer merely makes itself present, it works to rebuild legitimacy. Three forces have converged to produce this two-way embedding: the enabling logic of platform technology, mounting pressure on performance-based legitimacy, and the practical learning of the actors involved. Yet the very intensity of interaction that makes governance more responsive also breeds four resilience challenges. Non-routine interaction erodes the authority of formal institutions; emotionalized communication weakens procedural rationality. Instant feedback encourages short-termism, and unequal digital visibility produces a crisis of representation. Meeting these challenges requires a conceptual shift from reactive response to systematic institutional learning, together with a structural coupling mechanism of “platform sensing—institutional feedback.” In day-to-day governance, universities need a workable coexistence of platform interaction and institutional rationality so that dynamic resilience can be built into the governance system.