Bridging, Destabilisation, and Simulacrality: The Visual Rhetoric of Travel-Related Live Images on Xiaohongshu

Abstract

As a visual form on contemporary social media platforms, Live Images transform the photographic instant into a short dynamic event through micro‑temporal extension and looped playback. When applied to travel imagery, this format doesn’t simply preserve a frozen scene, but foregrounds movement, temporal continuity, and visual detail in the presentation of travel experience, becoming a significant expressive pathway for travel imagery on digital platforms. Taking Xiaohongshu as a case study, this article conducts a content analysis of a purposive sample of highly engaged travel‑related Live Images posted between May 2024 and May 2025, with a sample of 772 images, and examines them from a visual rhetoric perspective. The findings suggest that travel Live Images tend to construct a rhetoric of presence, loosen the spatiotemporal closure associated with conventional still imagery, and organize travel experience through recurring visual tendencies related to bridging, destabilization, and simulacrality in platform‑based circulation.