Algorithmic Immersion Across Cultures

Zuo, X., & Feng, Y. (2025, August). Immersed across cultures: Narrative transportation, platform affordances, and Li ziqi’s global appeal on YouTube. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of AEJMC, San Francisco, CA.

This research examines how global audiences engage with Li Ziqi’s YouTube videos through narrative transportation, emphasizing YouTube’s role in facilitating this process. By increasing accessibility and interactivity, the platform supports deeper immersion, helping viewers connect with her stories across cultural and geographical boundaries. Using supervised machine learning-based content analysis of 645,215 comments, we classified them as either “transported” (70%) or “non-transported” (30%). To explore this further, we applied topic modeling and identified six topics in transported comments: emotional comfort and gratitude, admiration for Chinese beauty and culture, vivid sensory simulation of daily activities, dream of a simple rural life, personal reflection and hopefulness, and love for grandma and family bonds. These findings show how YouTube’s affordances support cross-cultural storytelling, with Li Ziqi’s sensory-rich and non-verbal drama narratives fostering emotional and cognitive immersion.