Digital Storytelling and the Global Dissemination of Chinese Traditional Culture: Opportunities and Challenges in the Social Media Era

Abstract

The rapid development of social media has transformed the ways in which traditional culture is communicated across national and cultural boundaries. As a multimedia communication strategy, digital storytelling combines narrative techniques with digital technologies to present cultural content in engaging, interactive, and visually accessible forms. This paper presents a narrative literature review examining the role of digital storytelling in the global dissemination of traditional Chinese culture in the social media era. Drawing upon existing studies on digital storytelling, social media communication, and cultural dissemination, the review analyzes the opportunities, challenges, and future directions of this emerging communication approach. The findings indicate that digital storytelling enhances cultural accessibility by simplifying complex cultural concepts through multimedia narratives, increases audience engagement through participatory communication, promotes cross-cultural understanding by emphasizing universal human experiences, and strengthens China's cultural soft power.