Short video narrative and China’s national image construction from the perspective of foreigners——Take the short video of Shanghai epidemic as an example

Abstract

With the continuous development of globalization and the rising international influence of China, more and more foreigners have started to pay attention to China, and they actively join Chinese Internet platforms to make short videos of their daily lives and anti-epidemic routines in China and post them on Internet platforms, becoming one of the important bridges for cross-cultural communication, and at the same time has enabled Chinese people to know China more objectively under the perspective of the other. Based on the theory of otherness and frame construction, this paper selects 200 short videos involving foreigners during the spring 2022 Shanghai closure and control period for the content analysis on major short video platforms, and constructs categories for the narrative perspective, narrative content, narrative characters, and narrative attitude of such short videos, puts forward four hypotheses to analyze the relationship between their narrative strategies and communication effects, and based on the above analysis, we will further discuss the international communication strategy of China and the mass communication strategy of short videos in the context of the epidemic.