Echoes of Emotion: Linking Narrative and Reader Response of Web Novels in Chinese and English

This article examines how fictional narratives' emotional valence affects reader response across languages and platforms. We reproduce findings from research on Wattpad, which shows stories' emotional valence influences reader reactions, with sentiment alignment varying by genre. We extend the analysis to two additional platforms (Qidian and WebNovel) with Chinese and English content, and employ Generalized Additive Models to also investigate nonlinear relationships between narrative and comment sentiment. Results confirm that narrative emotional valence significantly shapes reader response, with stronger correlations in Chinese narratives than English. Platform characteristics emerge as significant moderating factors in this relationship. Our multilingual corpus analysis reveals that while original findings are reproducible, cross-cultural dimensions add complexity to the interplay between narrative emotion and reader engagement in web novel communities.