Transmedia Storytelling and Community Consciousness Construction of Grand Canal Intangible Cultural Heritage in Digital Twin Scenarios

Abstract Addressing the problems of fragmented narratives and weak community consciousness in the transmission of the Grand Canal Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), this study pioneers a Digital Twin (DT)-empowered Transmedia Storytelling (TS) framework. By constructing a multi-dimensional DT model integrating Spatial Twins (historical scenes), Process Twins (craftsmanship processes), and Knowledge Twins (ontological graphs), it designs a multi-modal narrative matrix centered on the DT platform and coordinated with social media, AR, and offline activities. This reconstructs the story world of the Grand Canal ICH and promotes user participation in content co-creation. Validation based on a mixed-methods approach using typical ICH cases shows that this model significantly enhances user immersion (increase of 32%) and cultural cognition (\(\:{d}z\)=0.87, 95% CI [0.69, 1.05]). Furthermore, through the "immersion experience - emotional resonance - identity reinforcement" mechanism, it effectively promotes the significant enhancement of core dimensions of community consciousness such as cultural identity (β = 0.72), regional belongingness (β = 0.75), and participation willingness (β = 0.42–0.77, p<0.05–0.01) (e.g., cultural identity β = 0.72, regional belongingness β = 0.75, p < 0.01, large effect). The innovations are reflected in: Proposing the DT-TS integration paradigm to solve the problem of narrative discreteness in ICH; Empirically demonstrating the positive driving effect of digital twins on cultural community consciousness; Establishing a transferable "technology empowerment - narrative activation - consciousness consolidation" model, providing theoretical and methodological support for the digital and living transmission of cultural heritage.