Cross-cultural Communication Mechanisms and Cultural Meaning-Making on Digital Platforms

Abstract

What happens to the cultural connotations of songs, gestures, jokes, political symbols, etc., when they leave their original contexts of production and spread across digital platforms? Most existing studies have addressed only part of this problem. Research on representation examines the construction of cultural difference; research on participation traces users' remixing and discussion of content; platform studies explains how data, ranking and governance structure visibility. Treating these processes as independent, however, cannot explain the changes that occur during circulation. This conceptual paper proposes a trajectory-based framework linking three dimensions of platform-mediated meaning-making: the representation and translation of cultural materials, their participatory and affective recirculation, and the infrastructural allocation of attention. The framework is recursive rather than sequential. Translation invites responses; those responses generate signals for recommendation systems; the resulting pattern of visibility affects subsequent translations and representations. This framework can explain why the same circulation can produce creative hybridity and mutual recognition while also enabling decontextualisation, appropriation and unequal interpretive authority. The article puts forward analytical questions for tracing who determines the "legibility" of culture, whose interpretations spread, and how platforms reinforce certain meanings while marginalising others. It presents comparative and longitudinal research designs that can test these relationships across multiple languages, communities and platform environments.