Research on New Media Content Operation Strategies from the Perspective of Transmedia Storytelling

Abstract

New media platforms are developing quickly and have changed the content creation, distribution and consumption game. As audiences spread themselves across a host of digital ecosystems, traditional content operating strategies are proving to be less and less effective, with a single platform optimisation strategy generally no longer enough. This paper is an attempt to explore some new strategies for content operations in the new media, and a theoretical framework is proposed that combines narrative coherence measurement, content engagement optimization and multi platform distribution modeling. The Transmedia Narrative Index (TNI) is created to measure the level of narrative coherence across the various media platforms. A Content Engagement Index (CEI) is derived to understand the interaction pattern of users in multiple dimensions and a Platform Synergy Coefficient (PSC) is proposed to quantify the amplification effect of coordinated content deployment across different platforms. Based on the data of 52,990 content from five major Chinese new media platforms in the last one year, empirical analysis is carried out. The results show that transmedia storytelling strategies are significant in all of the evaluation metrics in comparison with single platform, repurposed, and adapted content strategies. By using the transmedia approach, a CEI of 0.467 is achieved, a TNI of 0.728 and a PSC of 1.423, which shows improvements of 228.9%, 215.2% and 62.4% respectively when compared to single platform approaches. An ablation study is also conducted to see how different modules impact the performance, showing that the TNI module has the highest impact on the overall performance and confirming the central role of narrative coherence in effective cross platform content operations. The results offer theoretical implications and practical suggestions for new media content operators who want to leverage transmedia storytelling techniques and methods to gain maximum audience participation.