Why is Li so popular on overseas social media?

First of all, they are more familiar with the discourse system and narrative mode of the Internet platform. Compared with digital immigrants, which migrated from the traditional media production and consumption environment, young people who grew up with the Internet and social media, as "digital aborigines", are more familiar with the expression logic of digital media, and the content they produce is more suitable for the needs of the target audience.

Secondly, with the rise of video platforms such as YouTube and Tik Tok, the Internet has become more and more "visual". Compared with words, video content naturally has stronger cross-cultural communication ability and is easier to be understood by different cultural groups with language barriers. Therefore, it is easier for young people who are used to using YouTube and Tik Tok to cross the boundaries of language and culture, and to move and impress overseas audiences with the content produced by visual texts.

Third, young Internet content producers grew up in a more modern and open China, so it is easier for this generation to talk about their life experiences with overseas audiences, which makes their content close to reality and full of life interest. Both the rural life in China presented in Li's video and Xiao Ye's description of the life of modern urban youth in The Office contain life-oriented scenes that are difficult to find in the tagged narration of traditional image propaganda films, and are more likely to resonate with overseas young people.

Therefore, the combination of the discourse logic of digital media, the cross-cultural characteristics of video texts and the unique life experience of young people has formed a new way of external communication in the Internet age. For the post-90 s and post-00 s who don't have too heavy historical burdens and painful memories, they can express themselves in a more confident and relaxed style. They inadvertently incorporated young people's understanding of China's life and times into their works, telling a "China story" different from the past.

From this point of view, the decade from the launch of the propaganda film in Times Square to the rise of bloggers such as Li is the transformation from traditional mass communication to Internet mass communication, and also the transformation of China's story from a single country narrative to the participation of multiple subjects in narrative construction. If the traditional external communication is responsive, it is more about eliminating prejudice, responding to disputes and changing the stereotype formed by overseas media reports on China, then the external communication led by young people is constructive, and it is more about telling stories and sharing experiences.