On 10 February 2026, Knowledge Organization (KO) published an article by Yunzhong Zhang and Xiao Feng titled "A Data-Driven Approach to Designing Digital Narratives in Traditional Residential Heritage Contexts".

Yunzhong Zhang, Ph.D., is a professor and doctoral supervisor at Shanghai University. He is a Shanghai Shuguang Scholar and a recipient of the Baosteel Outstanding Teacher Award. His research interests include digital humanities, knowledge organization, think tank development, and data governance. He has led one major late-stage funded project in humanities and social sciences supported by the Ministry of Education, two projects funded by the National Social Science Fund of China, and four provincial- and ministerial-level projects, including Ministry of Education humanities and social sciences planning projects. He has published two academic monographs, and one of his policy advisory reports was individually adopted by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee.

He has published more than 60 academic papers in CSSCI- and SSCI-indexed journals, and five of his representative works have been reprinted in full by Information Center for Social Sciences, Renmin University of China. He is also a young editorial board member of Library and Information Service and Knowledge Organization, Deputy Director of the Young Scholars Committee of the Shanghai Society for Library Science, and Director of the Center for Intelligence Studies at Shanghai University. He has been recognized by CNKI as one of the “Highly Cited Scholars — Top 1%.

Xiao Feng is a doctoral student at the School of Cultural Heritage and Information Management, Shanghai University. Her research interests include digital humanities and data science.

 

Author's Interpretation

Traditional residences embody profound historical and cultural significance. In employing digital narratives for the dissemination of traditional residential heritage, it is essential to avoid an excessive emphasis on visual spectacle at the expense of scientific rigor, as well as the mere accumulation of interactive technologies that neglect the internal logic of the narrative.

Taking Shanghai's Nanyin Hall as a case study, this research applies the narratological framework of “story and discourse.” We first collected geospatial data and generated objective narrative content through systematic visual analysis. Subsequently, event extraction and feature vector clustering were employed to identify shared narrative structures within large-scale textual corpora on Shanghai's traditional residences. Based on these findings, we designed the specific digital narrative for Nanyin Hall.

Through this study, we hope to effectively foster cross-cultural understanding of regional residences among global users and, ultimately, raise public awareness regarding the protection of traditional residences.

 

Original Article

A Data-Driven Approach to Designing Digital Narratives in Traditional Residential Heritage Contexts: https://www.imrpress.com/journal/KO/53/1/10.31083/KO45957

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