doi: 10.1633/JISTAP.2025.13.2.3 Citation BibTeX RIS Mendeley

Cross-Platform Content Distribution Behavior: A Qualitative Analysis of YouTube Creators’ Video Content on the Chinese Video Streaming Service Bilibili

• Hantian Zhang (Sheffield Creative Industries Institute, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, United Kingdom)
• Katrin Scheibe (Department of Information Science, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany)
• Franziska Zimmer (Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Social ICT Research Center, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan)

This study investigates the practices of Western YouTube content creators’ cross-posting behavior, i.e., uploading their content on Bilibili—a Chinese video-sharing platform. A qualitative content analysis is employed to analyze videos of 14 popular YouTubers to compare the content of videos posted on both platforms. The findings indicate that the content differs for both platforms, possibly to accommodate Chinese viewers. The results show that Western YouTubers have made multiple changes to their original content before reuploading them to Bilibili, including the addition of Chinese subtitles, cut-out sponsorship content, shorter and translated descriptions, altered thumbnails, and exclusive content for Bilibili. The results also show a less frequent uploading schedule on Bilibili than on YouTube. While existing studies have explored content creators’ cross-posting behavior within the same social media ecosystem, the study significantly contributes to advancing our understanding of online creators’ content distribution practices across platforms in different cultural domains, especially in a Chinese-Western context.