Exploring Seasonal Journalism: The Role of Media in the Sanyuesan Festival’s Cultural Significance

This study examines how seasonal journalism functions as a strategic tool of “cultural governance” in shaping the Guangxi Sanyuesan Festival. Analyzing 69 years (1956–2024) of coverage from the party-state newspaper Guangxi Daily, this research moves beyond traditional longitudinal analysis by applying seasonal journalism to the specific “cultural rhythms” of China's political-cultural context. Using LDA topic modeling and textual analysis, the study finds that the festival's media representation follows a “spiral development” model. This model features two dimensions: The Cycle, a stable, ritualistic reinforcement of core cultural symbols to build collective memory; and The Ascent, a dynamic integration of contemporary state agendas, evolving from political co-optation to cultural branding and comprehensive integration with the national narrative. The study argues that this spiral mechanism is a sophisticated governance technique driven by state will, rather than Western market-driven logic. It makes a dual theoretical contribution: providing the “spiral model” as a new tool for analyzing periodic media and enriching the seasonal journalism field by revealing its crucial political and governance dimension in a non-Western, state-led media system.