Transmedia Storytelling and Community Consciousness Construction of Grand Canal Intangible Cultural Heritage in DTS

Addressing the challenges of fragmented narratives and weak community consciousness in the transmission of the Grand Canal Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), this study proposes a Transmedia Storytelling (TS) framework empowered by Digital Twin (DT) technology. The framework is realized through a multi-dimensional DT model that integrates Spatial Twins (for reconstructing historical scenes), Process Twins (for simulating craftsmanship processes), and Knowledge Twins (for structuring ontological graphs). Centered on this DT platform, a multi-modal narrative matrix is designed, coordinating social media, augmented reality (AR), and offline activities to reconstruct the story world of the Grand Canal ICH. This integrated approach effectively promotes user participation in content co-creation.Validation based on a mixed-methods approach using typical ICH cases shows that this model significantly enhances user immersion (increase of 32%) and cultural cognition (d! =0.87, 95% CI [0.69, 1.05]). Furthermore, through the \immersion experience - emotional resonance - identity reinforcement\ mechanism, it effectively promotes the significant enhancement of core dimensions of community consciousness such as cultural identity (\u03b2=0.72), regional belongingness (\u03b2=0.75), and participation willingness (\u03b2=0.42\u20130.77, p<0.05\u20130.01).The key innovations include: proposing the DT-TS integration paradigm to resolve narrative discreteness in ICH; empirically validating the positive impact of digital twins on cultural community consciousness; and establishing a transferable \technology-narrative-consciousness\ model that supports digital and living heritage transmission. This research offers a scalable digital solution and a theoretical- methodological foundation for developing smart heritage systems.