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Tse, Hoyee and Wessie, Ling (2026) Visual diplomacy: visual politics and liberal imaginaries in transnational activism on Hong Kong. Asiascape: Digital Asia, 13 (1-2). pp. 93-118. ISSN 2214-2312
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.
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