ABSTRACT
Government agencies over the world are integrating social media technologies into their communication systems. An optimistic rhetoric about digital government thrives in the academia. Scholars laud digital media as a liberating force capable of overcoming many established boundaries of government communication. The concept of media practice implies that technologies interact with specific social/historical contexts to entail different practices and mediation. As WeChat becomes an integral part of the Shanghai municipality, practices based on the knowledge, perception and objectives of WeChat practitioners may relate in complex patterns to the practice of officials attuned to the mediation of legacy technologies. WeChat practices may spill over the existing time-space parameters of a government. Shanghai Fabu offers an ideal case to examine the media practices that re-set the temporal-spatial order of the municipal government, which hosts over 50 offices and oversees all grass-roots local government bureaus in Shanghai. Shanghai Fabu started offering the public one-stop access to government services in 2014.
