Transnational Reception of Korean TV Dramas among Chinese Audiences: Topic Modelling Analysis of Douban Reviews

Lixia Dang, Abdul Latiff Ahmad, Hasrul Hashim

Abstract


The growing circulation of transnational television content has reshaped how audiences engage with media texts across digital platforms. Within this context, South Korean television dramas (K-dramas) have gained sustained popularity among Chinese viewers. This study examines how Chinese audiences receive and interpret K-dramas by analysing online discussions of Reply 1988 on Douban, one of China’s most influential social platforms. The study aims to identify dominant thematic patterns in audience discourse and to explore how these themes are interpreted and articulated within platform-based environments. Methodologically, this study employs a computational text analysis approach based on topic modelling. A large corpus of user-generated reviews was collected and analysed using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to identify recurring themes, which were then illustrated through representative audience comments. Four dominant themes are identified. They are romantic and interpersonal relationships, evaluative engagement with production and narrative construction, emotional viewing experiences, and family life embedded in everyday contexts. The findings show that Chinese audiences’ reception of Reply 1988 is strongly emotion-orientated. In addition, the reception extends beyond emotional expression to include evaluative judgements with production practices. Moreover, the reception is frequently integrated into familiar family and everyday life experiences. This study contributes to research on transnational television reception and offers empirical insight into how global media texts are locally interpreted in contemporary platform-mediated environments.


Keywords


K-dramas; audience reception; Douban review; Topic modelling analysis

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/ebangi.2026.2303.15

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