Digital Media Narratives and Cultural Perceptions: A Comparative Study of China–Pakistan Relations on Social Media

Abstract

The paper is a comparative study of the digital media discourse regarding the China-Pakistan relationship within the social media in the two respective countries, and how it affects the cultural perception of the relationships between the two countries. Though there is an official all-weather strategic cooperation partnership, there is still a gap in comprehension of decentralized public discourse (Smith and Li, 2022). Based on a mixed-method approach, more specifically, the sentiment analysis and the thematic analysis of a specific sample of 200 social media posts (n=200, 100 in each country) in Twitter (Pakistan) and Weibo (China) provides a chance to study the main thematic and emotive distinctions. The digital cultural asymmetry is reported statistically significant ( 2, p < 0.05). There is excessive positive sentiment (85) and Strategic/Geopolitical orientation (45%). In comparison, the Pakistani discourse is more sentimental (45% non-positive) and Economic/Development themes are more prominent (40%). Even though a smaller and exploratory sample is used, the results indicate an upward trend in which the Pakistani populace regards the partnership as conditional and undergoes a practical examination of the domestic impact of CPEC (Qasim et al., 2021).