"China's Strategic Narratives About AI: Regional Variations In Communication via CGTN on YouTube"

In October 2023, Chinese President Xi Jinping articulated China's vision for the global governance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) during the Third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, introducing the Global AI Governance Initiative. Xi underscored the importance of amplifying the representation of developing countries in international AI governance to ensure equitable rights, opportunities, and standards for all participants. China leverages state media, including the China Global Television Network (CGTN), to propagate strategic narratives about AI to international audiences across global social media platforms, such as YouTube. This paper will examine the effectiveness of China’s strategic narratives about AI as conveyed through four CGTN YouTube channels: CGTN Africa, CGTN Europe, CGTN America, and CGTN Global. YouTube is chosen as the focus of this research due to its position as the second-largest social media platform by monthly active users, and also as data from the platform is openly accessible via the YouTube API. This study will analyse 416 videos about AI posted by CGTN between October 2023 and November 2024 on the aforementioned YouTube channels. The paper will seek to answer three research questions: (1) How do China’s strategic narratives on AI, as disseminated by CGTN on YouTube, differ across target regions? (2) To what extent does audience sentiment in YouTube comments align with China's strategic AI narratives? (3) What factors contribute to variations in China’s strategic narratives about AI communicated to different regions? Employing a large language model to apply natural language processing (NLP) techniques and text-as-data methodologies, including sentiment analysis, topic modelling, and cosine similarity analysis, this paper will analyse video transcripts and audience comments to explore regional variations in strategic narrative framing and audience response. Additionally, a linear regression model will be employed to identify factors influencing variations in China's strategic narratives about AI across regions. The dependent variable will be the variation in strategic narratives about AI, derived from sentiment analysis scores and topic modelling of the transcripts and comments on CGTN YouTube videos, while independent variables will include China’s foreign policy stance towards each region, bilateral trade volume, geopolitical alignment with China, and the presence of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects. Control variables will encompass regional internet penetration rates and levels of economic development. The hypothesis to be tested is that variations in China's strategic narratives about AI across regions are influenced by China’s foreign policy stance, trade relations, geopolitical alignment, and BRI involvement. Regions with stronger trade ties, greater geopolitical alignment, and significant BRI involvement are anticipated to exhibit more favourable sentiment with China’s strategic narratives about AI. Furthermore, regional internet penetration and economic development levels are hypothesised to moderate these influences on narrative variation. This research aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of China’s strategic narratives about AI and the factors shaping these narratives for diverse regional and global audiences. It also seeks to provide insights into the effectiveness of CGTN’s communication strategies concerning China’s strategic narratives about AI on YouTube, thus contributing to broader discussions on the international politics of AI.