Unmasking China’s Facebook Diplomacy During COVID-19 Pandemic in Africa: Analysis of User Data

China’s use of international social media platforms such as Facebook to spread its foreign policy around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic has sparked discussion in academia and elsewhere. As a result, this study investigates Chinese embassies’ use of digital platforms in Africa by examining the content of posts on these platforms to establish dominant themes and expose African impressions of China through followers’ comments through big data analysis. The results demonstrate that Chinese embassies use Facebook to criticize Western dominant notions of democracy and human rights and propagate China’s democracy as superior, while Africans regard Chinese as people aiming to destabilize their governments’ economies, seize their resources. There is a need to improve Chinese institutions’ tactics for engaging with the digital public in order to effectively apply digital diplomacy practice in the big data sphere, as they encounter hate speech and have their messages misinterpreted.