Abstract The #StopAsianHate movement began in 2021 in response to the Atlanta Spa Shooting Tragedy in March 2021 to raise awareness about the racialized and gendered violence against Asian women. Since then, global K-pop fans have adopted this hashtag to address racism against K-pop stars. How have global K-pop fans influenced #StopAsianHate, and what does that imply about the potential for global solidarity movements? We look at non-English-language #StopAsianHate content on Twitter and conduct a mixed-methods study, combining topic and user modeling and critical discourse analysis. We find that global K-pop fans reshaped the movement and redirected its focus to celebrity grievances and fandom solidarity through persistent topic dominance and active fandom-driven discourse production. In the process, the hashtag’s attention shifted from the most marginalized and precarious victims of Asian Hate – such as Asian women, whose voices and bodies have been erased – to globally recognized celebrities, such as BTS .
Abstract Since the Supreme Court’s landmark 2018 decision to ‘read down’ Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code to decriminalize consensual same-sex acts, queer discourse in India has shifted from the pursuit of legal reforms to negotiations of intimacy, kinship, and belonging. In conceptualizing OTT platforms as media assemblages, our comparative close readings of Four More Shots Please! and Made in Heaven , two Amazon Prime Original series, critically evaluate queer visibility as it is shaped by intersections of neoliberal capitalism, Hindu nationalism, heteropatriarchal kinship, and the colonial afterlife of Section 377. We further argue that the homonormative logics in Bollywood since the reading down of Section 377 are often intensified and reconfigured in these OTT media assemblages, simultaneously making queer desire legible and blunting its more transgressive potential. In forwarding this argument, the article advances scholarship on queer Bollywood and queer digital cultures in the post-2018 Indian media landscape.
Abstract The Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti- ELAB ) movement in Hong Kong in 2019 marked a turning point in the global visibility of protest politics. Among its most innovative visual communication strategies was a crowdfunded, globally coordinated campaign of newspaper advertising. These advertisements illustrate that non-state actors can engage in a form of ‘visual diplomacy’. This article examines the Anti- ELAB advertising campaign within the context of broader debates on visual politics in international relations. As demonstrated in prior research, images portray how world politics is imagined, mediated, and enacted. To analyze the use of protest advertising as both agitprop and diplomacy, the article develops the concept of ‘visual diplomacy’: a form of networked symbolic action that forges transnational solidarities while being constrained by dominant liberal repertoires. This example from Hong Kong reveals the ability of such practices to attract unprecedented global visibility but often only in terms of familiar liberal aesthetics.
Abstract This special issue considers interdisciplinary contributions concerning both top-down and bottom-up efforts at agitprop hosting that examine the intersection of agitprop, social media, and protests in Asia. The rise of digital technologies has revolutionized the form and function of agitprop, transforming it from a centralized form of propaganda into a dynamic phenomenon driven by an anonymous mass whose solidarity stems from digital online networks. The evolution of the internet and growing digital expertise amongst the population, not to mention the influence of generative artificial intelligence, has led to different ways of combining online and offline messaging. By analyzing the mechanisms, aesthetics, and consequences of networked agitprop, this special issue shows how this new form of international politics operates, not just as a tool for regime change or revolution but, rather, as a fundamental force that reshapes our collective perception of reality.
Abstract During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese social media became the main arena for nationalist sentiment and ideological contestation, revealing perceptions of the West and emergent forms of participatory digital politics. The neologism ‘white left’ ( baizuo 白左 ), was used by netizens to critique liberal values, scrutinize Western governance, and assert Chinese moral and civilizational superiority. Drawing on a discourse analysis of Weibo content in 2020–2023, this article traces how baizuo served as a diagnostic shorthand for Western decline, reframing a global health crisis as a contest between a decadent West and a disciplined, virtuous China. Rather than reproducing state propaganda, these interventions emerged through affectively charged, bottom-up exchanges that drew upon and exceeded the boundaries of official nationalist discourse. By centring the communicative agency of netizens, this study examines anti- baizuo discourse as grassroots networked agitprop, contributing to the literature on digital nationalism, mobilization, and relations between China and the West.
