Persuasive Strategies in Indonesian Titles of Chinese Vertical Microdramas on YouTube
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Abstract
Video titles function as the first point of contact between short-video producers and prospective viewers, yet the titles of Chinese vertical microdramas (duanju) circulating in Indonesian on YouTube remain unexamined as a site of persuasive language. This study analyzes 200 Indonesian-language titles of Chinese vertical microdramas using a newly proposed Lexical Trigger–Persuasion Framework (LTPF), which traces titles across five levels: lexical triggers, linguistic devices, persuasive strategies, persuasion patterns, and viewer expectations. Grounded in Persuasive Communication theory, Advertising Language theory, Curiosity Gap theory, and Viewer Expectation theory, the framework operationalizes each analytical category through an explicit codebook with inclusion and exclusion criteria, enabling replicable, corpus-based coding rather than impressionistic classification. Beyond an expected romance-dominant framing (85.0% of titles), a finding particularly distinctive of this corpus is the salience of rebirth/second-chance narratives (9.5%), a persuasive-narrative device largely absent from prior clickbait and headline scholarship. Positive-Emotion Valence (46.5%) and Curiosity Gap (46.0%) emerge as the two dominant persuasive strategies. Yet, co-occurrence analysis shows they rarely combine within the same title (22.6–22.8% overlap), suggesting Indonesian-language duanju titles are constructed along two largely separate persuasive routes — one emotion-led, one curiosity-led — rather than one blended appeal. Lexical co-occurrence analysis further shows that Social Status triggers (e.g., CEO) co-occur with Relational triggers in 55.6% of Status-marked titles but Economic triggers in only 1.6%, indicating status-based fantasy operates largely independently of the rags-to-riches reversal assumed in prior genre commentary. This study contributes a transferable coding framework based on observable linguistic forms. It demonstrates its analytical value over conventional single-level persuasion coding for short-form digital titles beyond the Chinese microdrama genre.
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