What the study found
The study found that People’s Daily and CCTV News used different digital communication strategies when presenting rural revitalization on Douyin, a Chinese short-video platform. People’s Daily showed positive emotions across all topics, while CCTV News used a more varied sentiment pattern, especially for poverty alleviation and rural livelihood issues.
Why the authors say this matters
The authors say the findings show how institutional identity influences digital storytelling strategies. They conclude that the party newspaper People’s Daily emphasized ideological reinforcement, while CCTV News balanced political content with emotional resonance in the digital environment.
What the researchers tested
The researchers analyzed 445 rural revitalization videos from People’s Daily and CCTV News on Douyin. They used a computational approach combining Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling, a method for finding themes in text, and StructBERT sentiment analysis, a method for identifying emotional tone.
What worked and what didn't
The topic and sentiment analysis revealed that People’s Daily was dominated by positive emotions on all topics. CCTV News showed a more differentiated sentiment design, with especially noticeable variation in coverage of poverty alleviation and rural livelihood issues.
What to keep in mind
The abstract does not describe detailed limitations beyond the study’s focus on two outlets, one policy topic, and one platform. The findings are specific to the 445 videos analyzed and to the rural revitalization strategy on Douyin.
Key points
- People’s Daily and CCTV News used different digital communication strategies for rural revitalization on Douyin.
- People’s Daily showed positive emotions across all analyzed topics.
- CCTV News used a more differentiated sentiment pattern, especially for poverty alleviation and rural livelihood issues.
- The study analyzed 445 videos from the two outlets.
- The researchers used LDA topic modeling and StructBERT sentiment analysis.
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
- Publication date:
- 2026-03-10
- OpenAlex record:
- View
Get the weekly research newsletter
Stay current with peer-reviewed research without reading academic papers — one filtered digest, every Friday.