News Is Becoming Similar? A Diachronic Text Mining Exploration of News Convergence in Chinese Media

Junheng Qian, Zhi-jin Zhong

The convergence of news has long been a central concern in media studies, yet empirical evidence and precise measurements remain limited. China’s unique media system, which operates simultaneously in domestic and global contexts under distinct communication strategies, offers a rare opportunity to advance this line of inquiry. This study draws on news posts (N = 607,871) from four leading Chinese outlets over the past decade and applies a text-mining approach to examine Chinese news convergence across the two contexts and its relationship with audience news engagement. The results show a significant increase in discourse similarity among Chinese media in the global context but not in the domestic context. No upward trend in thematic structural similarity is observed in either context. Moreover, the associations between convergence and audience engagement are context-dependent: in the domestic context, discourse similarity is negatively associated with engagement, whereas in the global context, both discourse and thematic similarity are positively associated with engagement. These results challenge conventional views of news convergence, highlighting its dynamic nature across temporal and contextual dimensions. Further implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Engagement and Conflict within Narratives: A Computational Study of Narrative Effects in the Context of International Communication

Junheng Qian, Keying Zhong, Zhi-jin Zhong

In international communication, narrative—conveying messages through storytelling—is widely recognized as an effective communicative approach. However, this recognition often entails an overly optimistic view of its efficacy, overlooking the potential tensions and conflicts embedded in narrative practice. To address this gap, this study conducts computational analyses of 2,698 narrative posts and 144,224 associated comments from four Chinese international media outlets to examine three major narrative strategies on social media: value orientation (globalism vs. nationalism), narrative perspective (individual vs. collective), and the use of iconic symbols. Using a multi-level model of narrative effects, the analysis evaluates both the positive and negative outcomes of these strategies. Results indicate that nationalistic and collective narratives correlate positively with oppositional stances and negative emotions in audience comments, whereas iconic-symbolic narratives are linked to higher audience attention, more positive emotions, and fewer oppositional responses than non-iconic ones. Overall, these findings advance understanding of digital narrative dynamics, highlight the variability and dynamism of narrative effects, and offer theoretical insights for narrative practice in international communication.