Balancing Authority and Accessibility: Configurational Communication Strategies of Chinese Provincial Heritage Institutions on Social Media

We examine how Chinese provincial archaeological institutions use social media to balance professional authority with public engagement. The study addresses long-standing tensions in heritage studies over expert-driven narratives and how digital platforms reshape cultural authority. Employing a mixed-method design of content analysis, fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), and Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) on 6,498 posts from 28 provincial accounts, this research unpacks the complex configurational pathways to effective digital communication. The findings challenge linear assumptions of conventional media richness theory, revealing that institutional credibility and trust markers (e.g., content originality) are critical for sustained public dialogue, often functioning as core conditions for engagement that can substitute for media sophistication. Image-based communication consistently proves superior to video in balancing evidentiary rigor with cognitive accessibility. Our fsQCA analysis identifies five distinct pathways to success, revealing that marginalized institutions can effectively employ “visual compensation” strategies to overcome resource constraints. Ultimately, this research provides an empirically-grounded, configurational model for heritage professionals, demonstrating how strategic combinations of credibility cues and media choice can foster more equitable forms of cultural preservation, thereby transforming ephemeral online attention into enduring public value.