Digital Resilience of Cosmopolitanism: TikTok Refugees’ Platform Migration and Communication Practice With RedNote Natives

This study extends a three-stage framework of the digital resilience building process into the domain of hypermediated political crises by using US’ TikTok ban as a critical case. Drawing on non-engagement observation of the event and systematic analysis of empirical materials, we adopt a contextualized political analysis to examine how “TikTok refugees” absorbed shocks, adapted to risks, and ultimately transformed their digital political/apolitical practices under this hypermediated crisis. In this process, RedNote natives, initially apolitical and seemingly “pure” social media users, were drawn into a playful and ironic form of digital carnival triggered by the influx of “TikTok refugees.” As the event unfolded, interactions between the two groups gradually shifted from early stages characterized by gamification and entertainment toward exchanges centered on everyday life and connections through high-cultural and artistic practices. Through this organic evolution of a media activism event, digital resilience deepened into a form of affective solidarity. Consequently, “TikTok refugees” and RedNote natives coalesced into a cosmopolitan discursive community, reactivating the openness and inclusivity that once constituted the “cultural genes” of the global internet. Beyond this case, we argue that the seemingly coincidental yet structurally inevitable diversity of their communicative practices reflects a broader geopolitical context in which global citizens, through bottom-up resistance and “the power of organizing without organizations,” subtly challenge and reconfigure a long-standing, state-centric international political–cultural order. This challenge does not operate through overt political confrontations but rather through micro-level, depoliticized, everyday communicative practices rooted in civil and interpersonal interaction.