This study examines the 2026 Dongguan Super Strawberry Music Festival to analyze how a circuit-based festival is eventized within urban space and how it contributes to regional cultural reproduction. Based on Weibo comment data, the study employs temp...
This study examines the 2026 Dongguan Super Strawberry Music Festival to analyze how a circuit-based festival is eventized within urban space and how it contributes to regional cultural reproduction. Based on Weibo comment data, the study employs temporal trend analysis, sentiment analysis, topic classification, and cluster analysis. The findings show that the Music Festival was not merely a music performance or cultural tourism activity, but a regional cultural event shaped by the interaction of festival branding, urban space, on-site experience, digital platforms, and participants’ emotions. Weibo comments revealed a temporal rhythm of ‘pre-event anticipation—festival participation—post-event resonance’, while the discourse centered on ‘locality—on-site experience—artists’. The study further shows that spatial anchoring localized the circuit-based brand, experiential memory transformed Dongguan into a sensorially perceived place, and fandom-driven platform circulation expanded the event into a translocal youth cultural network. In this process, Dongguan is re-narrated from a manufacturing-oriented city into a cultural place associated with youth culture, outdoor music, urban leisure, and festival experience.