Story continuity, factual recomposition and differentiated semantic change across Chinese news websites and Weibo

Cross-platform comparisons can conflate which news stories are circulated with how the same stories are represented. This study examines story continuity and semantic change in Israel–Iran conflict reporting by six Chinese news organisations through their websites and official Weibo accounts from 13 June 2025 to 1 October 2026. Acquisition yielded 162,869 records, reduced to 137,443 unique URLs, of which 131,854 fell within the observation period. A stratified probability audit of 2,895 records identified 1,431 core-topic observations, including 171 with verified counterparts. Separately, 544 source-verified story pairs (1,088 texts) yielded 12,923 source-located factual-operation annotations and six independently coded semantic dimensions. The audit established a weighted verified co-publication lower bound of 10.32% within the defined acquisition frames. Within matched stories, semantic continuity predominated, but changes were dimension-specific: diplomatic, military and humanitarian prominence decreased more often than increased on Weibo, while editorial emotion showed no comparable directional pattern. Among 164 stories with a change in dominant directly voiced actor, 133 retained the same editorial-emotion category. Factual additions and omissions co-occurred, and 43.6% of stories with Weibo texts at least as long as their website counterparts still omitted website facts. Multiple-version stories showed higher omission rates before adjustment, but this association was not robust after accounting for organisation, conflict phase and relative text length. Brand differences in story composition did not translate into robust evidence of brand-dependent moderation. The study refines cross-platform news research by linking yet distinguishing story allocation, publication-version identity, factual recomposition and dimension-specific semantic rearticulation: a shared story can remain recognisable while its facts, speaking positions and substantive emphases change selectively.