See, Touch, Feel: Theorizing Twitter/X Images for Diplomacy

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Social media images are central to the practice of digital diplomacy. Some of the most contentious political engagements involve digital images designed to challenge or reaffirm the national identity of key political players. Yet the role of touch in conditioning how social media images are seen is curiously absent from International Relations analyses of the visual politics of digital diplomacy. We know far too little about this phenomenon. This article seeks to contribute to the study of images in global politics by developing a tripartite theorization of how the visual, tactile, and emotional intersect to mediate how Twitter images are seen within the practice of digital diplomacy. The article pays attention to the tactile experience of using Twitter, bridging the gap between seeing social media images as visual objects, and the affective resonance these images have as a marker of political power. I argue that touch acts as a conduit between the embodied, material, and visual to produce an affective encounter that contributes to how users feel about Twitter images. The intertextuality of the visual, tactile, and emotional dynamics of Twitter images are important elements of visual social media practices sustaining the strategic representation of identity. This framework allows me to build a theoretically grounded skilful speculation as to how digital diplomacy crisis events such as the China-Australia Twitter spat unfold and resonate beyond the digital.