China content on TikTok: the influence of social media videos on national image

2.1 National image

American economist Kenneth E. Boulding first described the national images that are important in international systems as “those which a nation has of itself and of those other bodies in the system which constitute its international environment” (Boulding 1959, p. 121). This definition describes an intersubjectivity between ‘self’ and ‘the other’ as information is communicated in a society (Meng 2020). When thinking about national images of other countries it is also important to think of how images are formed from within people’s own countries and ideas of nationality.

National image is about how a nation is perceived by other nations while national identity is how people in a nation perceive their group belonging. National identity is explained in Triandafyllidou (1998) as a sort of double-edged sword that both allows the sense of belonging in a national community, but also defines who is a foreigner. He goes on to explain concrete examples of those things that create a distinction between a nation and the other, such as cultural traits, myths, and traditions. Belonging to a national community allows for easier communication with those inside the same community than with outsiders (Triandafyllidou 1998). Given this, when we consume media that is from, or that include those we perceive as ‘the other,’ it is assumed that the information is processed in a different way than if it was from those who share the same national identity.

Castano et al. (2016) explains that the reason a country would be concerned with its national image has to do with their strength and ability to achieve international objectives and build alliances in ways that go beyond their economic and military power. In this way, national images are seen as information-enhancing schemas that assist in building the mental representations of nations. Without much technical knowledge, people generally hold attitudes toward foreign countries, consistent with what they experience over time, in a way to simplify the complexity of the entire international environment that they live in. They go on to explain how maintaining a positive national image is especially important for a rising power such as China, particularly due to their challenging of United States hegemony. When a country is seen as such a distant other in a person’s mind, it is possible that the extreme differences stick more in the formation of mental schemas.

Willnat et al. (2022) propose that national image consists of two main factors: cognitive, what an individual knows about a nation, and affective, how an individual feels about that nation. These factors, acquired over a lifetime, are then thought to shape an individual’s perspective, with the idea that feelings toward the people from a certain country will lead to having similar feelings toward the country itself. This is then where the idea of stereotypes plays a role, as well as the media’s role in shaping and perpetuating them. These authors propose that the concept of national image can be measured through a person’s stereotypes, feelings, and knowledge about a nation and its people.

2.2 China’s image in western media

Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the United States’ relationship with China has been defined by several periods of tension while both nations rely heavily on each other for economic success.

In understanding current media representations, it is first important to recognize the history of how Chinese people, and more generally Asians, have been treated in America since migrating here. Following the large wave of immigration toward the end of the ninteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century, many North Americans were concerned of the Chinese immigrants’ inability to assimilate which they saw as eventually damaging to their own economic advancements (Lee 2007).

The idea of the Yellow Peril came about in American media around this same time and worked to warn of Japanese and Chinese immigrants wanting to take over America and white civilization (Shim 1998). They were often depicted as subhuman and as if they were there to take jobs away from white American workers. This led to many Asian immigrants returning to their home countries or moving into Chinatowns and working in trades that would not interfere with whites.

The model minority stereotypes followed in the 1960s when African Americans were fighting for civil rights. American media used Asian Americans to display success stories of what they saw as assimilating to American culture and ways of life without the help of anyone (Ngo and Lee 2007). While they appear seemingly positive, these stereotypes worked to contain and silence Asian Americans, while also attempting to explain the shortcomings of other minorities by pointing the blame away from America itself (Osajima 2005).

The Yellow Peril idea grouped together Asians and Asian Americans as a single concept while pushing that there should be a collective attitude toward them (Lyman 2000). As a current rising power, China is seen as a threat, and the only real competition to America when it comes to the size of their economy. Similar ideas can be seen today with technological advancements in China and the fear of cyberattacks and media propaganda. Being the largest power attempting to challenge U.S. hegemony, Western civilizations may fear this rise just as much as they did during the initial wave of immigration.

2.3 China–U.S. trade war

More recently there has been increasing conversation surrounding a trade war between the United States and China. Starting in 2018, the administration under former president Trump, imposed tariffs on several Chinese goods including clothing and electronics (U.S. Relations with China 2021). As conversations escalated over the following years tariffs increased on both sides, with the Chinese government answering and imposing them on goods leaving their country as well.

When discussing the back-and-forth tariffs, news media sources from the U.S. more often referred to it as a “war” than Chinese media sources (Ha et al. 2020). Along with this, they would use more demonizing language and combative rhetoric when discussing China, whereas China would discuss mutual interests between the two countries. The U.S. media, however, has not been completely one-sided and there is more of a mixed support but at the same time they are willing to cross partisan lines when it comes to foreign policy.

Many media outlets are now describing these disputes as a sort of cold war, as both parties do not seem to have an end goal. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace describes the current situation as “being driven less by economic realities and more by great power rivalry and nationalism – factors exacerbated by mutual mistrust over each other’s strategic intentions” (Huang 2021).

2.4 Coronavirus

Possibly the biggest event that has affected the image of Chinese people and Asian Americans as of recently is the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. There has been an abundance of harmful rhetoric surrounding China since the beginning of the pandemic given its origins, including the use of terms such as “Chinese (Corona)Virus,” and “Wuhan (Corona)Virus.” On March 8, 2020, there was a 650% increase of the terms in retweets on Twitter, with an 800% increase in these terms on March 9, 2020, within news media articles (Darling-Hammond et al. 2020). In the same study that tracked this increase, Darling-Hammond et al. (2020) found that after March 8, 2020, anti-Asian American bias grew enough to offset the previous three years of decline.

Between March 19, 2020, and June 2021, the Stop AAPI (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) Hate coalition reported over 9000 racially motivated attacks related to the pandemic (Lang 2021). Many would attribute this to racially charged terms, like those previously mentioned, when referring to the pandemic. It was reported that there was a 1900% increase in the NYPD reporting of hate crimes against Asian Americans in New York in 2020 (Lang 2021).

Elias et al. (2021) discuss how COVID-19 created an ideological divide in the US, heightening nationalism especially among conservative groups. The impact fear has on the reaction to out-groups leads to further othering of minorities and ultimately racism and xenophobia. In a time where people want answers or feel overwhelmed by changes and information, they may look for areas to place blame.

2.5 A changing image

A study from the Pew Research Center done in 2020 found many changing views toward China by those living in the United States (Devlin et al. 2020). In the published study, Devlin et al. point to the recent trade war rhetoric as well as the pandemic as possible causes for these changes. It was found that two-thirds of participants in the survey had an overall unfavorable view of China, which is the highest since the Pew Research Center started asking this question in 2005. Among some of the greatest concerns that Americans have include China’s impact on the environment, cyberattacks, as well as trade and job loss.

2.6 TikTok and content discovery across culture through algorithm

One aspect that TikTok utilizes to differentiate itself from other platforms deals with it focusing less on identity management (Bhandari and Bimo 2020). TikTok encourages users to interact most with the constantly updating algorithm catered to their specific habits, as well as the creation of original content. This is done through the ‘for you’ page acting as the landing page with videos from those that you follow scattered randomly within. To encourage content generation the button to create a video is centered at the bottom of the screen. Additionally, users can click on the sound of any video to then have the option to use that sound on their own content. These two aspects display how TikTok is presented more towards the self in the user experience. On other platforms the actions taken by a user often deal with more insular interpersonal communication between a handpicked network, whereas TikTok allows greater opportunity to explore.

The uses and gratification theory is commonly used in research to understand the appeal and reason behind the popularity of TikTok (Montag et al. 2021; Omar and Dequan 2020; Yang and Ha 2021). The theory works to explain the reason why people choose to seek out particular media (Katz et al. 1973). Yang and Ha (2021) performed a study involving a survey of Chinese college students to determine the primary motivation behind their use of Douyin measuring four elements: entertainment, information sharing, information seeking, and socialization. The results found entertainment to be the dominant motivation of the four, with socialization as the least. This emphasis on entertainment over information sharing or socialization displays the more insular nature of the app, less influenced by social groups due to the custom experience.

Along with a network of followers, TikTok fosters a unique influencer culture. TikTok excels in the discoverability category, with its aforementioned “For You” and discovery pages. Additionally, videos are not only served based on virality, and instead the algorithm will mix new videos into the user’s feed, allowing new or smaller creators a similar chance of being discovered (Gillespie 2022). This discoverability assists in the diversity of content available for any user, and along with the casual nature of following another TikTok user, creates an advantageous ecosystem for budding influencers. Once amassing followers, it then changes how audiences perceive posts due to presumably higher metrics (likes, comments, shares) on the videos (Ha and Willnat 2022).

Chen (2012) discusses the demassification effect of new media and changes that have been made to how people consume content. With advancements in social media, especially along with the inception of TikTok, there is no longer a need to design content for a homogenous audience as traditional media has done in the past. People can now create, disseminate, and consume the messages that appeal to them.

Given the history of the western portrayal of China as well as prevalent stereotypes and longstanding model minority myth, it is important to know how, if at all, these themes carry over onto a platform like TikTok. Recent events such as the US/China trade war and COVID-19 pandemic have played a large role in the portrayal of China by traditional media. With TikTok primarily serving the purpose of entertainment, it is possible that there is a greater variety of viewpoints as well as content on the platform.

The exploratory research questions aim to discover the type of China related content that is viewed most on TikTok to provide sufficient understanding and context for analyzing the results of the survey.

2.7 Intercultural communication in social media

While the negative impacts of social media have been extensively researched, several positive influences have been increasingly noted, especially in regard to the ease in communication with those across greater distances (Subramanian 2017). In regard to the transformation of what it means to be a global village, the world in a way has become smaller with the increased opportunities for people to interact. A sort of intercultural contact has become an everyday occurrence for many depending on who they choose to follow or interact with on their personal social media.

Much literature has been written on YouTube and how it reaches beyond traditional media to create a space of its own with the ability to create new and unique narratives (Yu 2020). In doing so, these spaces allow for those seen as the other to produce narratives to challenge those that are dominant with full creative control. Similarly, to YouTube, TikTok and other video content driven social media platforms allow for discussion and dialogue in the form of comments. This dialogue comes from a place of shared interests and is done so voluntarily. Oftentimes in the case of TikTok the motivation behind a comment is to get as many “likes” as possible, whether through humor, genuineness, or relatability. The comment section allows for the ability to reply to others fosters a constant back-and-forth relationship between users and the poster.

When viewing or interacting with content on social media from outside their own culture, a person acts as an outsider looking in. In doing so, this has been seen to increase appreciation for one’s own culture through self-reflection and understanding (Stier 2009). Additionally, research has found that intercultural communication can serve as a shortcut to reducing conflict and prejudice interculturally (Peng and Wu 2016). The intergroup contact theory, as proposed by Gordan Allport, is the idea that under certain conditions, contact between majority and minority groups can reduce prejudice (Allport et al. 1954). These conditions include equal status, common goals, intergroup cooperation, and mutual support of authorities, laws, and customs. While all of these conditions are not always present on social media, there are opportunities and situations where they can exist. By forming relationships with people online through common goals and interests’ people may be able to find more similarity with others than they had previously thought.

2.8 Influence of social media on national image

Openness and interactivity have been pointed out as characteristics that give social media an advantage in the formation of national images (Yang and Wan 2016). Along with these two traits, social media also has an element of communization, allowing any organization or ordinary person to have a voice and some element of control. Whereas before traditional media may have worked to push homogenous images of certain countries, opportunities exist on certain platforms to challenge longstanding norms or ideas. With the increased speed of globalization, the desire for countries to maintain, control, and improve their national image is likely to grow. Social media helps create more transparency, particularly due to the interactive element that it provides. The ability for the consumer to then understand the images being portrayed is both convenient and quickly done.

User-generated social media videos, like those seen on TikTok, exist as pieces of cultural artifacts in the form of entertainment and art, therefore playing into a country’s soft power. Present and future social media seem to exist in many ways as a burgeoning reservoir for this national image management. Advancements in new technology and internet content are changing what it means to look through another person’s perspective from the outside. Firsthand footage and personal opinions are presented in packages that others from entirely different cultures and backgrounds may be able to relate to.

With the proposed definition of national image, it is assumed that the type of new media content consumed will affect the national image one holds over a certain country, in this case China. This study assumes that most videos on TikTok/YouTube about China are positive. Those who consume more TikTok/YouTube videos about China will receive positive framing about China. Hence, the first two hypotheses deal with the positive relationship between consumption of Chinese related new media content and the national image of China. Hypothesis one is focused on the passive consumption of content, whereas hypothesis two is focused on intentional consumption. The inclusion of YouTube in this study is intended to account for those who have never used TikTok. YouTube is essentially unavoidable in American culture, allowing for the inclusion of anyone. Additionally, YouTube deals primarily with intentional consumption, whereas TikTok deals with majority unintentional consumption, allowing for a more whole picture of online video content by including both of the two most dominant platforms.

3.1 Content analysis

A content analysis was first used to determine themes among the top China related TikTok videos. Octoparse, a web scraping tool, was used to pull the highest viewed videos containing either “China” or “Chinese” in the video description or hashtags. After removing videos that were no longer available (removed by TikTok or the content creator) or irrelevant (when China or Chinese was in the username, but the content was not related to China), the top 100 videos of the remaining were used. The posting dates of the videos gathered ranges from January 2020 to September 2021.

The videos were then each coded by noting the likes, shares, comments, views, topic, presence of stereotypes, valence, and language. Intercoder reliability was accounted for by having a third-party code 10% of the sample after being informed on all aspects and what to look for in each video. The variable for video topic had a 90% agreement (α = 0.865), and the variable for valence achieved 80% agreement (α = 0.661). If positive and neutral were treated as interchangeable the agreement would achieve 100%.

3.2 Survey recruitment

A convenience sample was chosen consisting of 120 students currently enrolled in large lecture courses in either MDIA1030 Media and Information Society, or COMM2010 Communication Theory at Bowling Green State University. Students in both courses were provided with extra credit upon completion of the survey. Those who did not want to participate in the study could earn the same credit by completing an alternative assignment of equal difficulty.

3.3 Questionnaire design

The survey consists of three main sections: general questions about the participant and their media use, national image measurements, and two China related TikTok videos followed by questions concerning the videos. Participants were encouraged to participate even if they did not use TikTok, and skipped the questions directly related to the platform.

Questions were first asked about general media use habits, as well as interaction with and opinion of China related online content. The final questions in this section dealt with concerns of authenticity, as to later compare that with their national image in an attempt to answer the third hypothesis.

Participants then answered a series of questions measuring national image before being asked to watch two TikTok videos about China. Given that the intention of this was not to be an experiment, every survey respondent was asked to watch the same two videos and there was no manipulation done between them. The purpose of the two videos was to gather an idea of how college students might react to this particular content given the perceived low exposure they might experience in their daily lives.

The first video is from content creator Li Ziqi (@cnliziqi on TikTok). Li Ziqi is an example of a Chinese person demonstrating aspects of Chinese culture. The second video is from the content creator @karissaeats. She is an American living in China that mainly posts content about food and has gathered a following of over 200,000 on TikTok. Directly following each video, the participants answered a series of questions to understand their immediate reaction.

In the final section of the survey participants were asked basic information including their age, political leaning, class standing, race or ethnicity, and gender identity.

3.4 Measurements

Three questions were asked as a control to measure the participants personal experience and contact with China and Chinese people. Borrowed from Ha et al. (2021), these included their travel experience to China, their number of Chinese friends and relatives, and their own self-rated knowledge of China.

Additionally, a five-point Likert scale was used to measure TikTok use, use of app features, tendency to come across Chinese content, perceived valence of China media coverage, and perceived U.S. and China relations.

3.5 National image measure

National image was measured using the three previously mentioned dimensions: affective, cognitive, and stereotypes. Each of the three dimensions were calculated and given as a score out of five, which can then be combined with an average to generate a full score for each participant.

The cognitive aspect was first measured through five general knowledge questions about China. These questions asked respondents to identify the capital, current president, political system similar to Willnat et al. (2022) as well as currency, and the official full name of the country.

The affective aspect was borrowed from the Fombrun-RI Country Reputation Index (Passow et al. 2005). The most relevant questions were pulled from the six dimensions including emotional appeal (“I like China,” “I Trust China”), physical appeal (“China is a beautiful place,” “China has well-educated residents”), cultural appeal (“China is socially and culturally diverse,” “China has a rich historical past”), and social appeal (“China supports good causes,” “China is a responsible member of the global community,” “China supports responsible environmental practices”).

Stereotypes were measured by asking participants to give their feelings about Chinese people under two different aspects, social manners (open-minded, honest, polite, non-prejudiced, generous, and arrogant), and work ethics (hardworking, inventive, good morals, accountable, smart), using a 5-point scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree (Zhang 2015).

4.1 Top China-related content videos

Of the 100 videos analyzed, a total of 41 were coded as positive, 53 neutral, and 6 negative. Given that TikTok videos are oftentimes short and lack context, videos were coded as neutral unless they were clearly attempting to portray some aspect of China or Chinese people in a positive or negative light. Videos coded as neutral largely consisted of food content, happenings in daily life, inoffensive comedy, or anything that did not blatantly appear either positive or negative. Videos coded as positive largely consisted of fashion videos showing Chinese people as attractive, videos showcasing impressive technology, or expert craftsmanship. The videos coded negative included offensive jokes, news events, and unprofessionalism.

After coding was complete a decision was made to not include the stereotypes category in the final analysis due to the lack of presence of the included traits being portrayed in the top videos. With the brief nature of the videos and oftentimes lack of structure or storytelling it did not make sense to include this category without further analysis or a more open-ended input.

Language employed in the videos was found to not play a very important role in the analysis due to the nature of the content not being focused on this element. But it is noteworthy that six videos containing exclusively Chinese language were among the top viewed.

Of the 20 topics coded, 6 appeared 10 or more times in the content analysis. These topics included Food & Beverage (18), Fashion & Beauty (16), Pop Culture (13), Performance Skills (12), Daily Life (10), and Comedy (10). The next highest topic frequency was five. It was excluded from further analysis along with topics occurring less than five times.

A one-way ANOVA was used to compare the means of views, comments, and likes between topics. The results of this analysis are displayed in Table 1. The Food and Beverage topic had the highest number of average views at 24.17 million. Despite being lower in average views, the Fashion and Beauty and Comedy topics had the highest number of average likes at 2.9 and 2.88 million, respectively. Fashion and Beauty and Comedy also received the highest average number of comments.

4.2 Survey

5.1 China-related TikTok content

Although there was a relatively small sample size, the results shown through the content analysis give a good idea of the type of Chinese related content that is being viewed and interacted with the most on TikTok.

Of the six videos that were deemed as a negative portrayal of China, it is likely they could be interpreted differently depending on who the end user is. The lack of many negative videos appearing in the 100 top viewed is likely due to there being a focus on entertainment when it comes to TikTok. While a wide variety of content exists on the platform, the short and funny videos may be more likely to rise to the top due to the app being seen as a quick and entertaining escape for users. TikTok content is user-generated and not official reports about an event or an issue. Political content is probably not high on the interest of users of TikTok, unlike mainstream media which focuses on China as a political and economic threat to the U.S.

To the research question of what Chinese/China related content is being viewed the most, it is difficult to give any one answer. On one hand, the topic of Food & Beverage came out clearly on top, but there was a wide diversity of videos within, similarly with Performance Skills. In Fashion & Beauty, Chinese street fashion videos took an aesthetically appealing approach, as several other videos did that involved food or craft. In general, China-related content is still a niche among what people watch on TikTok, although all videos in the content analysis achieved over 10 million views.

In regard to the research question of how Chinese people and China are represented on highly viewed TikTok videos, this brief content analysis shows that the videos generally tend to be either positive or neutral in their portrayal. This provides great contrast to traditional U.S. news media which usually casts China in a negative light. The positive videos can provide a positive framing of China and watching them can become salient attributes in the understanding of China.

5.2 TikTok use and shareability

The results of the survey are consistent with the assumption that young college students are among the population of active TikTok users as 80% of them used TikTok. Amid TikTok users, the large majority indicated daily use, displaying the strong habit-forming aspect of the app, similar to the other major social platforms. Being available to a U.S. audience for nearly four years at the time of this study, the proven longevity makes it significant when talking about social and cultural impact.

Along with active use of the app, a large majority of TikTok users (75.3%) indicated that they share videos on the app multiple times a week more. Sharing a video on TikTok is likely unique from other platforms that host video content like YouTube, because of the short length and low effort and commitment required from those on the receiving end. The high shareability nature of TikTok is consistent with the platform’s interests in discoverability and personalized content distribution. Most of the sharing is done so with presumably small circles or from person to person, as shown through the survey.

5.3 National image and China related content

As shown through the literature, China has consistently been a major topic in American news media, but the survey results show a lack of basic China knowledge among college students.

Not surprisingly, the average national image score is low (or on the negative side). The mean score is 3.31 out of 5. As this study found, national image is related to perceived U.S.–China relations and the consumption of China-content can facilitate positive national image of China. Perceived authenticity of the videos was shown to be a main issue. How to determine authenticity and whether videos posted from users are authentic became an issue to be considered.

In the case of the two videos that participants were asked to view for the study, positive correlations were found with national image. Hypothesis 1 states that people that like Chinese/China video content have a more positive national image of China can be supported, with the caveat that a low (7.5%) number of participants reported following or subscribing to social media accounts that post China related content.

Reported interaction with China related content on social media was low in the survey, both with following and encountering. There is a possibility that this is difficult to recall unless the content is blatantly related to China or explicitly stated somewhere that the survey participant would have noticed before. Similar to the difficulty in acquiring the top China related videos for the content analysis, many TikTok videos are posted with limited or no text, causing it to be difficult to discern where a video is coming from or the content context. Additionally, due to the short length of TikTok videos and endless scroll feature of the app, users are likely to encounter a large quantity of different videos. Especially when a person’s main motive is entertainment, they may not be paying close attention to the context. Hypothesis 2 states people that consume more Chinese/China-related online video content (i.e. TikTok, YouTube) have a more positive affection towards Chinese people. Although the self-rated frequencies resulted in the inability to confirm the hypothesis, it is possible that more accurate measures would lead to different results such as showing different China-related content video examples to people and asking whether they have watched similar content before.

Taking everything into account, the regression analysis found three variables to have a significant relationship with predicting national image: the authenticity of China related content, whether or not China related content is propaganda, and perception of the relationship between the U.S. and China. Variables concerning encountering and interacting with Chinese content were not significant predictors, possibly due to the aforementioned low self-reporting and the difficulties that go along with that recollection. More data is needed to understand the relationship that TikTok has with the three significant predictor variables and other possible interacting factors.

5.4 Authenticity and propaganda

While the majority of respondents neither agreed or disagreed on the questions of authenticity and propaganda, the remaining percentage leaned more heavily towards seeing the content as propaganda (29.2%) and not being authentic (30%). These results are consistent with the literature on a growing concern of cyberattacks from China and general increase in distrust of China by younger people. Hypothesis 3 stated that people with a more negative national image of China will tend to see positive Chinese social media content as propaganda or fake. The hypothesis was consistent with both questions of authenticity and propaganda (reverse coded) resulting in significant positive correlations with national image.

Political ideology played a significant role in the major findings of the survey, with Republican leaning respondents scoring lower in both overall national image and trust in Chinese social media content. Given the imposing of tariffs by former president Trump and his comments made on the origins of COVID-19, these results are consistent with views held by the Republican party.