“Hi, TikTok refugees!”: how memes talk in the TikTok-to-RedNote migration

In January 2025, the Chinese social media platform RedNote (Xiaohongshu) witnessed a surge of users identifying as “TikTok refugees” as a reaction to the potential US government ban on TikTok. Under the viral hashtag #tiktokrefugee, memes emerged as a key tool for communication between these new users and local Chinese users. This study examined how memes were used by both groups during this cross-cultural platform migration, focusing on the elements of memes, the ideas they convey, and their roles in facilitating affective publics. Drawing on Shifman’s tripartite typology of memes and Papacharissi’s concept of affective publics, we conducted a multimodal discourse analysis of 250 image-based memes and identified three key roles that memes played. First, as cultural connectors, memes combined Chinese cultural symbols with Western icons and English-language text to facilitate intercultural communication, although they may occasionally have led to misinterpretation. Second, as affective mediators, memes mitigated TikTok refugees’ anxieties about platform migration and eased intercultural and ideological tensions between China and the West. Finally, as political navigators, memes enabled subtle expressions of political satire and national pride through humor and playful visuals. We argue that memes function as both communicative instruments and affective artifacts, facilitating intercultural exchange and affective resonance amid platform migration.