How much of the news is the same text in different papers?A question raised by Smith and colleagues (2013), Boumans and colleagues (2018) and Nicholls (2019)
Most days, nearly all provincial front pages share a headline with People’s Daily, or almost none do
Share of provincial papers whose front page carried a headline similar to one on People’s Daily’s front page, by day
a People’s Daily front-page main headline names Xi Jinping that day: 41 daysnone does: 50 daysmark on the baseline: no paper had a similar headline, 21 days
On 52 of 91 days, at least three-quarters of the provincial papers compared ran a front-page headline similar to one of People’s Daily’s. On 30 days a quarter or fewer did. People’s Daily named Xi Jinping in a front-page main headline on 36 of the 52 high days and on 1 of the 30 low days.
Source: PropagandaScope, data to 12 October 2026. 14 July to 12 October 2026; 18 to 20 provincial papers compared each day, same-day issues. Two headlines are similar when they share enough of their characters (overlap of 0.4 or more). A similar headline does not establish that the text was reprinted, or which paper printed it first.
