Chinese Traditional Music in Short-Video Media: Audience Engagement and Communication Effects

Abstract

This paper examines the communicative effects of Chinese traditional music within short-video media environments, with particular attention to changing relationships between musical practices and contemporary audiences. It considers how participatory, audiovisual, and mobile forms of mediation reshape the circulation of musical works and reorganize relationships between communicators and audiences.

The analysis focuses on four interconnected dimensions: audience accessibility, audiovisual reinterpretation, interactive relations, and participatory communication. Short-video media make musical knowledge and performance more accessible to non-specialist audiences, helping to reduce the interpretive distance between specialized musical traditions and broader publics. Practices such as commenting, sharing, imitation, and creative adaptation further expand the role of audiences, enabling them to participate in the circulation, interpretation, and reproduction of musical culture.

Short-video media consequently transform the reach and modes of participation associated with Chinese traditional music while fostering new relationships among musicians, musical works, media forms, and audiences. As musical practices become embedded in everyday and interactive media contexts, they create broader opportunities for audience participation and social interaction around music, while opening new pathways for the cross-cultural circulation and contemporary communication of Chinese traditional music.