Semantic Compatibility and Structural Bridging Affect Content Propagation on Social Media

Researchers constructed a color vernacular co-occurrence network using ACG-related posts on the Xiaohongshu platform from January 2024 to March 2025. The study investigated how cognitive hierarchy compatibility and network structural position relate to the propagation of combined vernaculars.

Findings indicate that semantic compatibility and structural bridging show asymmetric associations with content spread.

Semantic hierarchy compatibility positively associates with propagation synergy. Within-level compatible combinations correspond to higher propagation gains. Cross-level incompatible combinations correspond to negative synergy.

Cognitive distance associates with propagation outcomes in a monotonically accelerating declining pattern. This pattern does not support the inverted-U hypothesis. The cognitive gains from semantic novelty do not offset the decoding burden that increases with greater hierarchical distance.

Semantic hierarchy and community structure show opposite directional associations with propagation. Cross-level semantics correspond to a negative association. Cross-community bridging corresponds to a positive association, and cognitively compatible cross-community combinations consistently outperform incompatible ones.

The study concludes that maintaining semantic hierarchy compatibility while pursuing structural bridging could inform future platform design. Incorporating cognitive compatibility into platform recommendation mechanisms represents one productive direction for additional research.

The rapid expansion of social media platforms and the fragmentation of interest communities have increased interest in understanding content propagation.

Users routinely combine community-specific semantic vernaculars in posts. Combination-level propagation patterns had remained largely unexamined within single-vernacular analytical frameworks prior to this work.