What the study found
The study found that two Chinese state media outlets used different sentiment patterns when presenting rural revitalization on Douyin, a short-video platform. People’s Daily was dominated by positive emotions across topics, while CCTV News used a more varied emotional design.
Why the authors say this matters
The authors suggest these findings show how institutional identity shapes digital storytelling strategies. They conclude that the party newspaper, People’s Daily, emphasizes ideological reinforcement, while the State Television Station, CCTV, balances political content with emotional resonance.
What the researchers tested
The researchers examined 445 rural revitalization videos posted by People’s Daily and CCTV News on Douyin. They used a computational approach combining Latent Dirichlet Allocation, a topic modeling method for finding themes, and StructBERT sentiment analysis, which estimates emotional tone from text.
What worked and what didn't
The analysis identified different communication styles in the two outlets. People’s Daily was dominated by positive sentiment across all topics, while CCTV News showed a more differentiated sentiment pattern, especially for poverty alleviation and rural livelihood issues.
What to keep in mind
The summary only describes two media outlets, one policy topic, and one platform, so the findings are limited to that scope. The abstract does not describe additional limitations beyond the study design and sample used.
Key points
- The study analyzed 445 rural revitalization videos on Douyin.
- People’s Daily showed positive sentiment across all topics.
- CCTV News used a more differentiated emotional approach.
- The results varied especially for poverty alleviation and rural livelihood issues.
- The authors link the pattern to institutional identity and digital storytelling strategy.
Disclosure
- Research title:
- People’s Daily and CCTV News used different sentiment strategies on Douyin
- Authors:
- Xinhu Xu, Mastura Mahamed, Sharil Nizam Sha'ri
- Institutions:
- Universiti Putra Malaysia, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Universiti Putra Malaysia
- Publication date:
- 2026-03-10
- OpenAlex record:
- View
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