Social media-based short videos are the recent popular medium of communication and entertainment. People are spending significant portion of their daily life, engaging on such videos. As a result, such videos are playing important roles on shaping public opinion and reflections. Unlike conventional media, one of the distinct characteristics of such media is that any person using a simple cellular phone-set can easily create the audio-visual contents and post them. Most importantly, such contents are not constrained within any state and national boundaries. All contents posted are global. Therefore, such short video contents are widening the international communication and subsequently are able enough to affect the inter-relation between states and nations at peoples’ level. They are helping to build and shape the people-to-people understanding about/between states and nations.

This research intends to explore the portrayal of Nepali life and culture in WeChat short videos known as Channel and how such contents are shaping understanding of Chinese people about Nepal. As interaction between Nepali and Chinese people has intensified recently, number of Chinese content-creators along with Nepali assistances are using social media platform to depict their observation among Chinese netizens.

 WeChat is one of the most popular social media in China with international coverage as well. Among number of WeChat Channels handlings those portraying Nepali life, society and culture, five most popular handlings will be selected as sources of data. Ten short videos of each of those handlings will be viewed and studied. At least ten comments on each of these videos will be collected and thoroughly analyzed on the theoretical framework of the Cultivation Theory developed by George Gerbner.

Chinese audiences’ perception and understanding about Nepal will be studied from ‘World Syndrome’ perspective under the Cultivation Theory, that argues the exposure of media drives the understanding of audiences.

How Nepali society, peoples’ life, culture are portrayed on those short videos? How Chinese audiences are perceiving such short videos? How could such perception affect people-to-people relation and even at higher level relation between two neighboring countries?

 It will be qualitative explanatory research that will use WeChat short videos as the major primary data source. It will contribute in the international relation, highlighting how the new media can be used as the data sources to study the present trend. Additionally, the research will also study how exact, distorted and partial are such depiction and portrayal.

Keywords: Cultivation theory, social media, China-Nepal