A Study on the Bilingual Memes Compensation Mechanism in the “TikTok Refugees” Phenomenon on Xiaohongshu Empowered by Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

On January 17, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the bill that mandates TikTok to “sell or be banned” ordering ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, to complete the sale by January 19, 2025. Failure to do so would result in a nationwide ban of TikTok in the United States. This decision led a large number of TikTok users to migrate to Xiaohongshu, giving rise to the distinctive “TikTok Refugee” phenomenon. Bilingual memes on Xiaohongshu have since sparked heated discussions among internet users. Using AI-driven content analysis tools such as Doubao and Kimi, this study systematically examines the semantic compensation mechanism of visual symbols for textual annotations in such memes. The findings reveal that in cross-cultural communication, pure textual annotations often suffer from meaning loss due to cultural and semantic differences. In contrast, visual symbols can provide semantic compensation for textual annotations through strategies such as context reconstruction, effectively improving the consistency of meaning in cross-cultural contexts and breaking down barriers to cross-cultural communication.