Dandan Pang

Young-Min Cho, Dandan Pang, Stuti Thapa et al.

While affective expressions on social media have been extensively studied, most research has focused on the Western context. This paper explores cultural differences in affective expressions by comparing valence and arousal on Twitter/X (geolocated to the US) and Sina Weibo (in Mainland China). Using the NRC-VAD lexicon to measure valence and arousal, we identify distinct patterns of emotional expression across both platforms. Our analysis reveals a functional representation between valence and arousal, showing a negative offset in contrast to traditional lab-based findings which suggest a positive offset. Furthermore, we uncover significant cross-cultural differences in arousal, with US users displaying higher emotional intensity than Chinese users, regardless of the valence of the content. Finally, we conduct a comprehensive language analysis correlating n-grams and LDA topics with affective dimensions to deepen our understanding of how language and culture shape emotional expression. These findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of affective communication across cultural and linguistic contexts on social media.

Jesse Cui, Tingdan Zhang, Kokil Jaidka et al.

Modeling differential stress expressions in urban and rural regions in China can provide a better understanding of the effects of urbanization on psychological well-being in a country that has rapidly grown economically in the last two decades. This paper studies linguistic differences in the experiences and expressions of stress in urban-rural China from Weibo posts from over 65,000 users across 329 counties using hierarchical mixed-effects models. We analyzed phrases, topical themes, and psycho-linguistic word choices in Weibo posts mentioning stress to better understand appraisal differences surrounding psychological stress in urban and rural communities in China; we then compared them with large-scale polls from Gallup. After controlling for socioeconomic and gender differences, we found that rural communities tend to express stress in emotional and personal themes such as relationships, health, and opportunity while users in urban areas express stress using relative, temporal, and external themes such as work, politics, and economics. These differences exist beyond controlling for GDP and urbanization, indicating a fundamentally different lifestyle between rural and urban residents in very specific environments, arguably having different sources of stress. We found corroborative trends in physical, financial, and social wellness with urbanization in Gallup polls.