Framing Returning Entrepreneurial Youth in Rural China: Narrative Analysis of Short Video Creators

This study investigates how returning entrepreneurial youth are framed within Douyin’s "Three Rural Issues" short video sphere. Drawing on a purposive sample of eight creators and a corpus of sixteen first-person narrative videos, we conduct narrative analysis grounded in framing theory. Coding proceeded along four dimensions: personal background, return motivations, self-positioning, and narrative focus, to examine how creators frame self-identity, articulate value orientations, and intervene in the "Three Rural Issues" discursive field. Findings show that short video creators have constructed a new youth image within rural revitalization through self-narratives: creators shift from rural documentarians to rural guardians, cultural trendsetters, and agents of revitalization. Educational and professional trajectories underpin entry into the field; diversified backgrounds provide unique material for creation, while media and marketing experience clarifies entrepreneurial direction. Return motivations combine policy and economic opportunities with intrinsic value commitments, producing narrative reorientation—from an early emphasis on economic returns to the increasing integration of cultural heritage and public-interest elements. Self-positioning evolves from individual entrepreneurs to participants in collective rural development, accompanied by a shift from traffic acquisition to the assumption of social responsibility. Narrative perspective expands from individualized lenses to multi-angled depictions that foreground rural vitality while acknowledging structural constraints and developmental challenges. The study extends framing theory to first-person digital storytelling and illuminates the communicative practices through which returning entrepreneurial youth negotiate subjectivity and agency within China’s rural revitalization discourse.