Context is Key(NMF): Modelling Topical Information Dynamics in Chinese Diaspora Media
Ross Deans Kristensen-McLachlan, Rebecca M. M. Hicke, M\'arton Kardos,, Mette Thun{\o}

TL;DR
This paper introduces KeyNMF, a novel topic modelling approach using transformer-based embeddings, to analyze information dynamics in Chinese diaspora media and assess PRC influence on European elections.
Contribution
The paper presents KeyNMF, a new static and dynamic topic modelling method that outperforms existing models on Chinese datasets and enables large-scale analysis of media narratives.
Findings
KeyNMF is effective in capturing topical changes over time.
The pipeline reveals PRC narratives in diaspora media before 2024 elections.
Method provides a scalable tool for studying media influence and information flow.
Abstract
Does the People's Republic of China (PRC) interfere with European elections through ethnic Chinese diaspora media? This question forms the basis of an ongoing research project exploring how PRC narratives about European elections are represented in Chinese diaspora media, and thus the objectives of PRC news media manipulation. In order to study diaspora media efficiently and at scale, it is necessary to use techniques derived from quantitative text analysis, such as topic modelling. In this paper, we present a pipeline for studying information dynamics in Chinese media. Firstly, we present KeyNMF, a new approach to static and dynamic topic modelling using transformer-based contextual embedding models. We provide benchmark evaluations to demonstrate that our approach is competitive on a number of Chinese datasets and metrics. Secondly, we integrate KeyNMF with existing methods for…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsOpinion Dynamics and Social Influence
