ABSTRACT
This chapter charts the online circulation of the iconic Tank Man photograph. After retrieving 50735 online circulations (URLs) of this image between 2013 and mid-2020, it applies computational methods to examine the relationship between its meaning and the (online) places where it is used to remember the Tiananmen protests. The chapter zooms in on the relationship between the digital circulation of the Tank Man, the memory of the Tiananmen protests, and the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests of 2014 and 2019-2020. We show how Hong Kong has provided a (online) space where Western and Chinese interpretations of the image clash and mutually sustain each other.
