Unpacking Discourses on Childbirth and Parenthood in Popular Social Media Platforms Across China, Japan, and South Korea
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| author | Wei, Zheng Li, Yunqi He, Yucheng Li, Yuelu Xu, Xian Qu, Huamin Hui, Pan Zhou, Muzhi |
| author_facet | Wei, Zheng Li, Yunqi He, Yucheng Li, Yuelu Xu, Xian Qu, Huamin Hui, Pan Zhou, Muzhi |
| contents | Social media use has been shown to be associated with low fertility desires. However, we know little about the discourses surrounding childbirth and parenthood that people consume online. We analyze 219,127 comments on 668 short videos related to reproduction and parenthood from Douyin and Tiktok in China, South Korea, and Japan, a region famous for its extremely low fertility level, to examine the topics and sentiment expressed online. BERTopic model is used to assist thematic analysis, and a large language model QWen is applied to label sentiment. We find that comments focus on childrearing costs in all countries, utility of children, particularly in Japan and South Korea, and individualism, primarily in China. Comments from Douyin exhibit the strongest anti-natalist sentiments, while the Japanese and Korean comments are more neutral. Short video characteristics, such as their stances or account type, significantly influence the responses, alongside regional socioeconomic indicators, including GDP, urbanization, and population sex ratio. This work provides one of the first comprehensive analyses of online discourses on family formation via popular algorithm-fed video sharing platforms in regions experiencing low fertility rates, making a valuable contribution to our understanding of the spread of family values online. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_06788 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Unpacking Discourses on Childbirth and Parenthood in Popular Social Media Platforms Across China, Japan, and South Korea Wei, Zheng Li, Yunqi He, Yucheng Li, Yuelu Xu, Xian Qu, Huamin Hui, Pan Zhou, Muzhi Social and Information Networks Computers and Society Social media use has been shown to be associated with low fertility desires. However, we know little about the discourses surrounding childbirth and parenthood that people consume online. We analyze 219,127 comments on 668 short videos related to reproduction and parenthood from Douyin and Tiktok in China, South Korea, and Japan, a region famous for its extremely low fertility level, to examine the topics and sentiment expressed online. BERTopic model is used to assist thematic analysis, and a large language model QWen is applied to label sentiment. We find that comments focus on childrearing costs in all countries, utility of children, particularly in Japan and South Korea, and individualism, primarily in China. Comments from Douyin exhibit the strongest anti-natalist sentiments, while the Japanese and Korean comments are more neutral. Short video characteristics, such as their stances or account type, significantly influence the responses, alongside regional socioeconomic indicators, including GDP, urbanization, and population sex ratio. This work provides one of the first comprehensive analyses of online discourses on family formation via popular algorithm-fed video sharing platforms in regions experiencing low fertility rates, making a valuable contribution to our understanding of the spread of family values online. |
| title | Unpacking Discourses on Childbirth and Parenthood in Popular Social Media Platforms Across China, Japan, and South Korea |
| topic | Social and Information Networks Computers and Society |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.06788 |