The Art of Storytelling in Authoritarian Regimes: Crafting State Narratives on Chinese Social Media

2025-12-07

AI Summary

This study examines how authoritarian regimes construct state narratives around major political events, focusing on two core dimensions: (1) the event’s impact on regime legitimacy—either reinforcing or undermining it—and (2) citizens’ capacity to verify official narratives through diverse information sources. Methodologically, it innovatively adapts the Narrative Policy Framework to authoritarian communication research, proposing a “Legitimacy Impact × Verification Capacity” two-dimensional analytical model that moves beyond unidirectional propaganda paradigms to reveal adaptive narrative recalibration. Drawing on social media texts (e.g., Weibo), the study employs quantitative narrative analysis via SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) triple extraction and joint modeling across multi-source accounts (governmental, state-affiliated media, and influential individuals). Empirically, it finds that legitimacy-threatening events trigger defensive narrative reconstruction; under high verification capacity, narratives shift significantly toward responsive adaptation—enhancing explanatory power for regime resilience.

Technology Category

• Natural Language Processing: Discourse, Pragmatics & Argument Mining
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Argumentation
• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Imperfect Information

Application Category

• Social Networks and Social Media: Media and governance, opinion dynamics, filter bubbles, polarization
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data provenance, reliability, and authenticity
• Responsible Web: Social and technical mechanisms of refusal for web technologies and applications

Abstract

This article examines how authoritarian regimes construct state narratives about politically consequential events. Building on the narrative policy framework and existing research on authoritarian propaganda, we propose two dimensions that shape narrative construction: legitimacy implications -- whether events enhance or threaten regime legitimacy, and citizen verification capacity -- the extent to which citizens can evaluate official narratives through alternative sources. Using quantitative narrative analysis of Chinese social media posts by government, state media, and celebrity accounts, we extract subject-verb-object (SVO) triplets to map dominant narrative structures across four major events. Our findings show that legitimacy implications of the event shape regime's efforts in storytelling and the beliefs highlighted in the narratives, while citizen's verification capacity could balance the strategic choice between a top-down manipulation and bottom-up responsiveness of state narratives. Together, the results reveal propaganda as a complex process of narrative construction adaptive to specific contexts, offering new insights into how dynamic storytelling sustains authoritarian resilience.

Problem

• Examines how authoritarian regimes construct state narratives on politically significant events.
• Analyzes legitimacy implications and citizen verification capacity in shaping narrative strategies.
• Reveals propaganda as a context-adaptive process sustaining authoritarian resilience.

Innovation

• Using SVO triplets for narrative analysis
• Analyzing legitimacy and verification dimensions
• Mapping narrative structures across four events