Research on the Impetus of Douyin to City Tourist Image Construction and Dissemination in China - The Case of Xi’an

Abstract: This thesis investigated how the short video sharing application Douyin produces an effect on city tourist images’ construction and dissemination in China, taking the Internet-famous city of Xi’an as a case study. Based on the semiotic theory and “5W” communication theory, the author collected 30 Xi’an-related short videos on Douyin as samples and recorded the relevant data manually for analysis. Two opposing trends-diversification and homogenization in the tourist image building and spreading processes were identified. On the one hand, Douyin users deploy numerous audiovisual symbols to create related short videos of different genres, which contributes to shaping Xi’an as a wonderful tourist destination with gorgeous landscapes, deep historical and cultural accumulation, and high modernity; then the destination images of Xi’an are disseminated by the communicators (users with diverse identities) through three different channels to the audience, which obtains good effects. On the other hand, the short videos’ content is getting homogeneous due to the limited source materials and users’ conformist mentality in the image construction process and Douyin’s algorithmic mechanism functioning in the image dissemination process.