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Communication across Borders: Translation & Interpreting; Vol. 04 No. 02 (2024) 
ISSN (online): 2766-791X 
ISSN (print):    2770-6354  

 

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An Analysis of the Current Situation of Hong Kong City Image Communication on 
YouTube and Research on Strategies 

 
Zhe ZHANG 

 
Guangzhou College of Commerce Guangdong, China email: 20122022@gcc.edu.cn 

Abstract 
This research takes the Hong Kong city promotional videos released by China International Television (CGTN) on the 
YouTube platform as the research object, aiming at exploring the unique performance, influencing factors, and improvement 
strategies of this promotional videos in international communication. In this paper, Python software was used to obtain the 
comment data of Hong Kong city's international promotional videos on YouTube platform, and combined with the methods 
of word frequency measurement and text analysis, semantic network was analyzed. Then a response strategy is proposed from 
the 5W communication theory (communication subject, communication content, communication channel, communication 
audience and communication effect). This research focuses on the Hong Kong city promotional videos released by China 
Global Television Network (CGTN) on the YouTube platform. The study aims to explore the unique characteristics, 
influencing factors, and potential improvement strategies for these promotional videos in the context of international 
communication. Using Python, the comment data from these videos on YouTube was collected and analyzed through methods 
such as word frequency measurement and text analysis. A semantic network analysis was also conducted. Based on the 
findings, a response strategy is proposed using the 5W communication theory, addressing the communication subject, content, 
channel, audience, and effect. 
 
Keywords: Hong Kong; city image; international communication; semantic network; affective tendency; 5W communication 
theory 
 

1. Introduction 
1.1 Background of the Research 
A good national image influences the construction of cities and the establishment of their image, and the image of cities feeds 
the national image in the same way. 
The 2016/2017 State of China's Cities Report proposes to plan the future of China's cities with a global vision, not only the 
development of global cities will affect the country's world influence and popularity, but also every city that wants to find a 
place in the forest of the world reconstructs people's imaginations and perceptions of the country and the city(Guo, Chen &Du, 
2018). Especially since China hosted the Olympic Games in 2008, people's attention to the image of the city has become 
higher and higher, and the world's attention to Chinese cities can not be ignored, the construction and development of China's 
national image and the need for image shaping of each city has become more and more urgent. 
As the number of global Internet users continues to grow, the flourishing of international online social media provides more 
space for city image communication. As the Internet enters the Web 2.0 era, the global social media platforms represented by 
YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have become the main positions for international social activities to ‘happen’ and ‘speak 
out’. YouTube is undoubtedly the world's largest video sharing platform with more than 1 billion visits per month, and it is 
one of the six social media platforms with the largest number of visits from overseas, which means that presenting the national 
image and the city's image on the YouTube platform creates a complete communication chain of the city's image in an all-
rounded, multi-level and deep pattern, and has a forward-looking effect on the presentation of the city's hardware facilities, 
living environment, humanistic style and spiritual delicacies. It has a forward-looking role and irreplaceable value for showing 
the city's hardware facilities, living environment, humanistic style and spiritual delicacy. 
1.2 Significance of the Research 
Hong Kong, as an international metropolis, the communication of its city image is not only about economic benefits, but also 
about the display of cultural soft power. However, the current status of city image positioning and communication is still 
vague and needs to be further explored. Hong Kong ranks first in the Report on Building Overseas Communication Power of 
Chinese Cities in 2021, which has certain research value in terms of its influence as well as the strength and scope of its 



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communication (Beijing, 2022). However, the current status of Hong Kong's city image communication on YouTube is all 
vague, thus requiring a deeper investigation. The study finds that by investigating and exploring the communication status of 
Hong Kong's international city image on YouTube, and summarizing the international communication ideas of Hong Kong's 
city image accordingly, it is also inspiring and useful for the external communication of such cities. Therefore, this study is 
of great practical significance and application value. Through the in-depth analysis of the current situation of Hong Kong's 
city image communication on YouTube, this paper expects to provide relevant policy makers and practitioners with scientific 
theoretical basis and practical guidance, with a view to better shaping and communicating Hong Kong's city image in the new 
media era. 
1.3 Research Theory 
In The Structure and Function of Social Communication, Lasswell constructively put forward the ‘5W’ model of 
communication, namely ‘who’, ‘says what’, ‘in which channel’, ‘to whom’, ‘with what effect’, ‘with what effect’, ‘in which 
channel’, ‘to whom’, ‘with what effect’, and ‘with what effect’. ’, ‘in which channel’, ‘to whom’, ‘with what effect’ with 
what effect’. These five elements explain the complete process of communication and play a fundamental role in the 
subsequent research of communication (Gao, 2008). This paper explores the main body of urban image communication on 
YouTube, clarifies who is communicating Hong Kong's urban image, and with the prosperity of social media, the range of 
communicators is also expanding, and then analyses in detail the content of the urban image, which also contains invisible 
emotional factors and is the presentation of the communicator's attitudinal tendencies. YouTube, as a channel for the 
communication of Hong Kong's urban image, provides a platform for the publicity of domestic and foreign cities. YouTube, 
as a channel for Hong Kong's city image to be disseminated, provides a platform for the city to promote itself to the outside 
world, and the city can make use of the diversified forms of communication in social media to increase the readability of the 
message, and the forms of communication are also a part of the ‘media analysis’ extended by the 5W model. YouTube is used 
by users from all over the world, thus expanding the range of recipients of the city's image in general, and the communicators 
are also the recipients, and the two are increasingly connected, with the effect of the communication mainly reflected in the 
degree of attention to the message, the degree of recognition, and the effect of diffusion. Compared with the unidirectional 
linear communication of the 5W model, the powerful commenting and retweeting functions provided by social media 
platforms, such as YouTube, increase the feedback link, which is conducive to the ‘reproduction’ of information content by 
communicators. 
1.4 Innovations 
Literature research reveals that there is a considerable amount of literature on city image research, but the research perspective 
mainly focuses on domestic social media, especially the literature that examines the construction of city image by short videos, 
while the literature that examines the city's international image is relatively small; most of the literature within the scope of 
the current research only focuses on the international dissemination of the city's image in a general sense, so this paper 
conducts a quantitative and qualitative investigation of Hong Kong's city image on YouTube. This paper is a quantitative and 
qualitative study of Hong Kong's city image on YouTube, which not only enriches the academic exploration of the 
international communication of Hong Kong's city image, but also expands the research ideas and contributes thoughts or ideas 
to other studies on city image. 
2. Research Methodology 
2.1 Sample Extraction 
This paper uses python technology for data collection, and investigates and researches the current situation of Hong Kong's 
city image communication on YouTube through content analysis and case study. 
This paper is based on the current situation of Hong Kong's city image communication on YouTube. Taking into account the 
fact that Hong Kong's ranking in the top one of the domestic cities regarding the influence of international communication 
and that there being a sufficient amount of data, the overall data selection is from the year of 2019 to the year of 2022. In this 
study, the Python tool was used to explore the data on YouTube about Hong Kong's city image from 11 October 2019 to 19 
December 2022, with ‘HongKong’ as the keyword, to exclude the Chinese comment samples and focus on the overseas 
comment samples. Chinese comment samples and focusing on overseas comments, non-English samples (due to small data 
size and language recognition difficulties), and pure emoji, punctuation and other meaningless symbol samples. In the end, 
we obtained 100,852 valid audience comment data. The study mainly employs data text analysis and semantic network 
analysis methods, aiming to investigate the effectiveness of Hong Kong's city promotional videos in international 
communication as well as improvement strategies. 



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Table 1. CGTN Hong Kong's international dissemination data on YouTube platforms 
Name of the data First Release 

Date 
Number of 
views 

Number of 
likes  

Number of 
comments 

1. Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area (GBA): 
Internationalization and Integration-part 1 

24th Nov. 
2020 

247,447 78 15074 

2. Hong Kong youth in Shenzhen: Try the Greater Bay 
Area 

22nd Jun. 
2022 

3,197 147 525 

3. Hong Kong's New Era: Stories From After 1997 | 
CGTN Documentary 

19th Dec. 
2022 

13,959 418 29434 

4. Hong Kong youth, here is a Hong Kong history class 11th Oct. 
2019 

50,008 1287 21818 

5. Hong Kong is Building a 2.5M Person City From 
Scratch 

7th Dec. 
2021 

360,993 9892 18395 

6. Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area (GBA): 
Internationalization and Integration-part 1 

24th Nov. 
2020 

247,447 78 15606 

2.2 Category construction 
Based on the basic attributes of the YouTube platform and the two categories of concepts, namely the concepts given to 
communication texts by mass communication and the concepts such as emotions contained in communication texts (Deng, 
2021:498), this study follows the rule that a complete YouTube text is a unit, and is based on four aspects, namely, user 
identity information, tweet content information, tweet interaction information, and tweet emotion information, according to 
YouTube's available information sources are encoded. The user identity information includes the user's positioning, identity 
and influence; the tweet content information contains the tweet content and multimedia information; the tweet interaction 
information is mainly about the dissemination effect, audience comments, including likes, comments, retweets, and audience 
comments on the Top5 texts; the tweet sentiment information is mainly related to the sentiment tendency, including positive, 
neutral and negative categories. The latest version 0.16.0 of TextBlob, an open source library based on the Python 
programming language, produces two values of ‘Polarity’ and ‘Subjectivity’. The two values are ‘Polarity (or positive and 
negative emotions)’ and ‘Subjectivity (subjectivity)’, where a Polarity of 0 is neutral (neither positive nor negative), a positive 
value (maximum of 1 and greater than 0) is positive (i.e., love, liking, recommending, approving, admiring, worshipping, 
etc.), and a negative value (minimum of -1 and less than 0) is negative (i.e., resisting, antipathy, sarcasm, complaining, hatred, 
etc.), (i.e., resistance, antipathy, sarcasm, complaint, hatred, etc.). The above categories are basically in line with the 5W 
model and its extended theoretical content. 
3. Analysis of the Current Status of Hong Kong City Image Communication on YouTube 
3.1 Semantic Network Analysis of Overseas Audience Comments on Hong Kong Cities 
After word frequency cleaning and statistical processing of overseas audience's comments on Hong Kong city promotional 
videos, we installed ‘Java11 for Windows’ and imported the data into the data visualization software ‘Gephi 0.10.1’ to draw 
semantic network maps based on co-occurring words and to summarize the main issues arising from overseas audience's 
comments on the sample documentaries. The data was imported into the data visualization software ‘Gephi 0.10.1’, and a 
semantic network diagram based on co-occurring words was drawn. 



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Figure 1. Semantic network diagram of the ‘Hong Kong People, Events and Situations Discussion’ framework. 

In the network graph, there are several nouns that have the highest node degree values, they are ‘people’ ‘China’ ‘city’ ‘do’ 
‘not’ ‘Chinese’ ‘country’ ‘bridge’ ‘beautiful’, and ‘great’. The magnitude of the degree values of these nodes can be seen that 
the degree values of the nodes are not only related to the word frequency, but also consistent with the emotional tendency of 
the audience. This suggests that the comments are generally positive and more focused on the Hong Kong crowd. Moreover, 
the comments are not only limited to evaluating people and events in Hong Kong-related news events, but also cover broader 
topics such as government administration. The most important node word in the center is ‘China’, and the most closely related 
node word is ‘people’, with the word ‘people’ in the densest network relationship. The word ‘people’ is in the densest network 
relationship. This shows that Hong Kong's participation in the construction of the Greater Bay Area is beneficial to the local 
people, with the ‘motherland’ as the background for the construction. 
3.2 Analysis of the Emotional Tendencies of Hong Kong City's Overseas Audience 
In this paper, the sentiment annotation of the corpus based on the latest version 0.16.0 of TextBlob, an open-source library in 
Python programming language, produces two values of ‘Polarity’ and ‘Subjectivity’, where Polarity (sentiment value) of 0 
means the sentiment is neutral (neither positive nor negative), and the sentiment value is positive (neither positive nor 
negative). The two values are ‘Polarity (sentiment value)’, where a Polarity of 0 is neutral (neither positive nor negative), a 
positive value (maximum 1 and greater than 0) is positive (i.e., love, like, recommend, approve, admire, worship, etc.), and a 
negative value (minimum -1 and less than 0) is negative (i.e., resistance, resentment, sarcasm, complaint, hatred, etc.), 
sarcasm, complaint, hatred, etc.). At the level of comment entries, the overall percentile values of the database for the 
proportion of positive entries, the proportion of negative entries, the proportion of neutral entries, and the proportion of 
subjective entries. The following results were obtained after importing nearly 2188 audience comments on Guangzhou city 
promotional films into the sentiment analysis runtime code: 56.7% of the entries with positive comments (Sentiment 
polarity>0); 30.94% of the entries with neutral attribute comments (Sentiment polarity=0); 30.94% of the entries with negative 
attribute comments (Sentiment polarity<0) accounted for 12.31%, and Subjective polarity<0) accounted for 73.11% (see 
Figure 2). It can be seen that overseas audiences' emotional responses to this Guangzhou city film are mainly positive and 
neutral, while there are also 12.31% of negatively inclined comments. 

 



Communication across Borders: Translation & Interpreting; Vol. 04 No. 02 (2024) 
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Figure 2: The emotional attitude towards the Guangzhou city promotional video 

4. Strategies for Improving the International Image of Hong Kong Cities 
Hong Kong city's international communication has not only gained favorable comments from overseas audiences, but also a 
certain proportion of negative comments, which indicates that there is still room for improvement in the relevant Hong Kong 
city's international communication work. Based on the above problems, the following improvement strategies are designed in 
a targeted manner. 
4.1 Constructing a diversified outreach organization 
YouTube is the world's leading video-sharing platform, and the dominant domestic voice in this field comes mainly from 
official media and a limited number of organizations and individual accounts. Nonetheless, there is a scarcity of Chinese 
media entities that are truly capable of exerting a wide-ranging communication effect and far-reaching influence on the 
international scene. Currently, the official-dominated communication model leads to a clear distinction between content and 
style, and this monolithic communication often leaves a question mark over the audience's acceptance of propaganda films. 
In order to break this pattern, we need to identify and motivate more civil society groups and individuals to enter into the 
creation and dissemination of promotional videos, and support those organizations that have the potential and strength to share 
more quality content (Green & Gredler, 2002:59-61). Particularly in the case of international communication of Hong Kong's 
city image, it is crucial to build a diverse group of communicators and to enhance the creative drive and capacity of all parties. 
Such a shift will not only drive more creative talents and organizations to join the cause of international communication of 
Hong Kong's and even China's culture, but also leverage on their unique perspectives and modes of expression to showcase 
Hong Kong's story to the world. On this basis, we should make unremitting efforts to broaden the horizons of the 
communicators, so that they are no longer confined to building up an image of Hong Kong or China, but extend to the whole 
grand blueprint of international communication. Cultivating such a body of communicators will ensure that we can build a 
more proactive image of China in the international arena, and create a group of international communicators who can convey 
China's voice and show China's style. This is a cultural self-renewal and a new chapter in conveying China's story to the 
world. 
4.2 Constructing the Concept of a "Community with a Shared Future for Mankind": Content and Audience Model for 
Dissemination" 
Against the backdrop of deepening global integration, the concept of building a ‘community of human destiny’ has become 
more and more crucial. This concept seeks to gradually dissolve cultural barriers between nations through the bonds of 
empathy and information exchange, and to expand mutual understanding and respect. Instead of pursuing total cultural 
assimilation, we should embrace diversity and the wisdom of ‘harmony and difference’. Through the bridge of empathy, we 
can not only dispel irrational stereotypes, but also stimulate intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding Franco& Ortiz, 
2020). The ‘community of human destiny’ not only inherits the profound heritage of traditional Chinese culture, but also 
integrates the essence of the Western Enlightenment era's concepts of the supremacy of reason and sociability. The concept 
is not only a modern elaboration of ancient Chinese wisdom, but also a deep insight into the current structure of the ‘nation-
state’. It rejects the Western hegemonic approach whereby national power determines the map of influence, and advocates a 
new paradigm of international relations based on morality and justice - the ‘Way of the King’. It encourages dialogue among 
nations on an equal footing, eschews confrontation and moves away from alliances to create a more coherent international 
community. China's adherence to the concept of ‘community of human destiny’ on the global stage not only demonstrates its 

Hong Kong
positive ratio negative ratio neutral ratio subjective ratio



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confidence in its national cultural heritage, but also reveals to all mankind a new way of resolving international disputes and 
cultural collisions. This innovative strategy of cultural diplomacy aims to promote the harmonious coexistence of global 
cultures, effectively resolve misunderstandings and stereotypes brought about by differences in history, culture and ideology, 
and contribute valuable strength to world peace and co-prosperity. 
4.3 Building multi-dimensional communication channels 
Although ‘joint narratives’ with a multitude of voices can compensate for the limitations of a single narrator, enrich the 
dimensions of communication, and enhance the effectiveness of international communication, they are still based on the 
perspective of ‘I’ Bremer, Mayr, Schmidtner & Rutzinge 2016). However, a single ‘self-report’ is not enough to reach a 
global audience, and the techniques of ‘endorsement’ and ‘voice-over’ can compensate for this, enhancing the authenticity, 
trust and effectiveness of the message. The techniques of ‘endorsement’ and ‘voice-over’ can compensate for this and increase 
the authenticity, trust and impact of the message. For example, the overwhelming response to a documentary about the Greater 
Bay Area on YouTube, with 2.39 million views and thousands of comments, suggests that international audiences are open 
to and even appreciative of China's stories delivered through third parties, and are likely to place a higher degree of trust in 
such non-China-centric content. This phenomenon undoubtedly provides valuable insights into our international 
communication strategies. 
5. Conclusion 
International social media breaks through time and space limitations, giving cities more and more opportunities to display 
their characteristics and attract admirers on the globalized stage, and bringing brand new opportunities for city construction 
and development. YouTube, as one of the most visited international social media, provides a broad platform for cities to 
promote themselves to the outside world. This survey explores the communication status of Hong Kong's city image on 
YouTube through data mining and content analysis, and draws the following conclusions: Combined with the specific survey 
results: YouTube presents Hong Kong's economic image of booming industries, advancing with the times in science and 
technology and education, and creating a brilliant future; its cultural image of deep cultural heritage and outstanding sports 
characteristics; its ecological image of complete infrastructure, well-developed transport, and excellent environment; and its 
ecological image of a city of high quality and high quality, and its ecological image of a city of high quality and high quality. 
It also presents the ecological image of Hong Kong with well-developed infrastructure, excellent transport and environment, 
as well as the image of warm and tolerant residents and the social image of poor law and order. In terms of communication 
subjects, the users' regional orientation is dispersed, mainly in Eurasian countries, and the communicators are mainly 
individuals, lacking opinion leaders; in terms of communication content, the main focus is on cultural and ecological areas. 
The image of culture and economy is prominent, and information related to the city's sports events, gastronomy culture and 
economic industry is centrally disseminated. In terms of communication form, it is mainly in the form of graphics, most of 
which are just simple text communication, and the overall utilization rate of short videos is not high, which needs to be 
supported by richer, more vivid and interesting forms of communication. In terms of communication emotion, positive 
emotion is the main focus. In terms of communication effect, the influence is still insufficient, the audience comments are 
polarized, and the overall communication effect needs to be further improved. 
On the basis of sorting out Hong Kong's image on YouTube, this study proposes a communication idea based on the 5W 
theory of marketing, that is, to enhance the city's image in three aspects, namely, to build a diversified foreign propaganda 
body, to build a communication content and audience mode of the concept of ‘community of human destiny’, and to build a 
multidimensional and three-dimensional communication channel. Due to the limitations of ideological theory and academic 
level, there are still deficiencies in this research, for example, the sample capacity of the survey is not comprehensive enough 
compared to the amount of urban image content in YouTube. When summarizing the characteristics of the city and its image 
positioning, there may not be completely reasonable, and there is still room for improvement. In the future, we will improve 
the exploration of the relevant topics and contents, and gain more from the investigation and research related to the 
communication of the city's image. 
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Fund: This work was supported by 2022 Humanities and Social Sciences Research Program of the Ministry of Education of 
China (Youth Fund Project): Research on International Image Construction and Intercultural Communication Strategies of 
Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Greater Bay Area (22YJCZH250); and Guangdong Province Philosophy and Social 
Science Foundation Project “The Evolution of Translation, Publication, and International Communication Models of Chinese 
Political Discourse (1952-2022)” (GD24CWY10).  
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


