ArticlePloS one2026
Strategic appeals and audience alignment in government short videos: A corpus-based analysis.
Article in PloS one, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This study examines how government short videos construct persuasive discourse through rhetorical strategies, using the Douyin account Meili Zhejiang as a case study. Drawing on audience-identification theory and Aristotle's three rhetorical appeals (ethos, pathos, logos), it develops a text-centered rhetorical-computational framework that combines corpus-based methods and rhetorical analysis. The dataset covers 360 top-liked videos posted over one year and all publicly visible comments, with exact-text duplicates removed. Python-based lexical and sentiment analyses, together with concordance inspection in AntConc, are used to trace how persuasive appeals are realized in the textual dimension of the videos and how they align with audience orientations. Results show that pathos predominates (44.77%), expressed through affect-rich language of familial warmth, collective pride, encouragement, and urgency. Ethos (28.33%) is built through institutional roles and localized references, often strengthened by citizen voices, while logos (26.89%) appears in factual and quantifiable expressions that ground emotional and ethical claims. Sentiment in the associated comment corpus shows a generally positive tendency (56.7%), consistent with the audience profile and the rhetorical configuration identified in the corpus. The study offers a corpus-assisted rhetorical approach to analyzing persuasion in platform-mediated governance and highlights how communicative effectiveness is shaped by a calibrated construction of appeals aligned with audience dispositions in short-video communication.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.