Since two million Hong Kong people took to the streets in the largest protest in the city's history to demonstrate against the proposed extradition of criminal suspects to Mainland China in the summer of 2019, Hong Kong continues to be gripped by an ongoing political crisis. Protesters' initial opposition to the extradition bill quickly turned into a broader cry for democracy and a wider set of political demands, including universal suffrage and an independent inquiry into alleged police violence. On the surface, the Covid-19 pandemic seems to have interrupted the protest movement and its control. In practice, the pandemic has reinforced the transformation of everyday space into protest space in Hong Kong. Unlike the 2014 Umbrella Movement with its 'occupy' logic, the recent protests have been based on highly mobile tactics of civil disobedience and self-mobilization and characterized as 'leaderless' (Lee et al., 2019). Mass rallies, wildcat actions or violent demonstrations on the streets would begin in one direction or with one targeted building and then shift across the city to create new protest sites. Black-clad protesters were joined by local residents, ordinary shoppers and white-collar office workers in central business districts, crowded housing estates and singing flash mobs in shopping malls, chanting pro-democracy and anti-police violence slogans and singing the unofficial protest anthem 'Glory to Hong Kong'. Some wore gas masks for protection against police pepper spray and tear gas; others wore face masks in defiance of a face covering ban introduced by the government in October 2019 through invoking powers granted under a colonial-era emergency regulations ordinance. Just as the innocuous yellow umbrella (yellow being synonymous with pro-democracy) served as a visual and expressive medium to communicate a political voice during the Umbrella Movement, the mask has now become an important symbol of resistance in the aesthetics of protest. One of the most distinctive aspects of the protest movement is its diversity and expertise in visual imagery (Ismangil, 2020). The widespread use of social media and image hosting sites, combined with Hong Kong's population density, allows for a rapid spread and high visibility of protest images. Some of these are curated by particular organisations while others are

In August 2016, Wings Gaming won the sixth edition of the International, a tournament for the videogame Dota 2. Wings Gaming, a team consisting of five Chinese players, was praised for bringing honour to China. This article explores various ways in which this Chinese Dota 2 community frames its fandom using nationalistic rhetoric. Teams identified as Chinese represent the country, honouring or disappointing the nation when they square off in tournaments. This article focusses on the everyday experience in this online community, arguing that the way in which people cheer for their teams stems from a nationalistic filter that makes nationalism the normative discourse in the community. A further comparison is made to American social media to discuss the role that truth plays when nationalism is discussed in the daily experience. This study concludes that a combination of factors surrounding the Chinese community creates a form of banal (cold) nationalism, which normalizes and strengthens national truths and myths.

In this paper we discuss the rise of BreadTube and what it means for the spread and normalization of socialist ideas online. We aim to focus on four major YouTube content creators – Contrapoints, Philosophy Tube, Shaun, and Hbomberguy – to outline how they construct their videos to entertain, inform, as well as debunk both alt-right and (economically) liberal talking points, helping to prevent potential radicalization of a mostly young audience who stand at a crossroads in their ideological development. Aside from examining the content of produces by the creators, we also hope to investigate the unique configuration of their platform use, emphasizing such elements as distributions, financing, and audience interaction.

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China is home to the world's largest audience for e‐sports, or competitive videogames. While competitive videogames have become popular within a borderless, digital environment, the e‐sports fan base has a decidedly nationalist element to it. This article argues that new forms of digital nationalism are part and parcel of normal discourse within the Chinese competitive videogames environment. Through a case study of one specific competitive videogame, this article shows how nationalist narratives are enacted by the community itself at the grass roots, creating bottom‐up forms of nationalism. Combining digital fieldwork with offline interviews and observations, the study sheds light on new forms of nationalist expression appearing online in China. It focuses in particular on memes and how these serve as micro expressions of nationalism, maintaining and reinforcing nationalist narratives originating within state discourses.