Narrative alignment and attention dynamics in online reviews: evidence from a movie platform

Purpose Drawing on the attention-based view this study examines whether narrative alignment (NA), the semantic correspondence between user-generated reviews and official movie synopses, is associated with weekly audience attention and whether this association differs across review-activity stages. Design/methodology/approach The study uses a movie-week panel comprising 119 films, 37,171 user reviews, and 7,521 movie-week observations from Douban (2017–2019). NA is measured through semantic similarity between review text and the corresponding official synopsis. Linear panel models with movie fixed effects and movie-clustered standard errors estimate its association with log-transformed weekly audience attention. Findings Weekly audience attention declined sharply across the review-activity lifecycle. After accounting for lifecycle dynamics and stable movie characteristics, NA showed no statistically detectable association with weekly audience attention or weekly average rating and its association with attention did not differ across stages. These estimates do not establish that the underlying associations are exactly zero. Originality/value The study broadens understanding of online-review consistency by distinguishing review-synopsis consistency from consistency within reviews, across consumer reviews, and between independent evaluations. Under review-activity lifecycle constraints, it separates the temporal structuring of weekly audience attention from the incremental relevance of review-synopsis correspondence.