The memeification of China’s Twitter diplomacy, 2019–2022: Adding memes to the toolkit of China’s wolf warrior diplomats

This study examines the use of memes as part of China’s digital diplomacy between 2019 and 2022. Few studies have examined how memes are used to advance state interests in relation to China’s public diplomacy. In this context, the main objective of this study is to provide a preliminary but comprehensive analysis of the content, objectives and novel practice of using memes to communicate China’s foreign policy goals on Twitter. To achieve this, we conduct multiple analyses through a combination of computational techniques and manual coding. The dataset comprises 725,000 tweets from 68 Chinese diplomats’ accounts and 13 state media accounts. Drawing on a theoretical framework regarding the use of humour in international relations, our findings reveal that Chinese diplomats’ use of images in their tweets resulted in significantly more retweets and tweets featuring playful memes achieved a high degree of virality. These memes employed sarcasm to amplify ideological contention, and in doing so, challenged traditional diplomatic decorum.