Analysis of Audiences’ Attitudes towards Product Placement in Short Videos Based on Appraisal Theory: A Case Study of the Bilibili Platform

Abstract

Supported by the systemic functional linguistic theory, this paper analyzes and compares audiences’ attitudes toward nine types of product placement in short videos on Bilibili by using the “attitude” subsystem of the appraisal theory. This paper focuses on the distribution of attitude resources and the positive and negative affective directions of audiences’ evaluation of different types of product placement. It finds that the distribution of affect resources and appreciation resources varies among different types. In general, the proportion of appreciation resources is much higher than the other two resources. This study tries to analyze the reasons behind the distribution in the context of video characteristics, advertised products, and the contents of comments, to provide a reference for the standardization of product placement in short videos.