Marriage Discourse on Chinese Social Media: An LLM-assisted Analysis

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Ye, Frank Tian-Fang, Gao, Xiaozi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Ye, Frank Tian-Fang
Gao, Xiaozi
author_facet Ye, Frank Tian-Fang
Gao, Xiaozi
contents China's marriage registrations have declined substantially, dropping from 13.47 million couples in 2013 to 6.1 million in 2024. This study examined sentiment and moral elements underlying 219,358 marriage-related posts from Weibo and Xiaohongshu using large language model (LLM)-assisted content analysis. Drawing on Shweder's Big Three moral ethics framework, posts were coded for sentiment (positive, negative, neutral) and moral elements (autonomy, community, divinity). Results revealed platform differences: Weibo leaned toward positive sentiment, while Xiaohongshu was predominantly neutral. Most posts lacked explicit moral framing. However, when moral elements were invoked, significant associations with sentiment emerged. Posts invoking autonomy and community were predominantly negative, whereas divinity-framed posts tended toward positive sentiment. These findings suggest that concerns about both personal autonomy constraints and communal obligations contribute to negative marriage attitudes in contemporary China, offering insights for culturally informed policies addressing marriage decline.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_23609
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Marriage Discourse on Chinese Social Media: An LLM-assisted Analysis
Ye, Frank Tian-Fang
Gao, Xiaozi
General Economics
Economics
Computation and Language
China's marriage registrations have declined substantially, dropping from 13.47 million couples in 2013 to 6.1 million in 2024. This study examined sentiment and moral elements underlying 219,358 marriage-related posts from Weibo and Xiaohongshu using large language model (LLM)-assisted content analysis. Drawing on Shweder's Big Three moral ethics framework, posts were coded for sentiment (positive, negative, neutral) and moral elements (autonomy, community, divinity). Results revealed platform differences: Weibo leaned toward positive sentiment, while Xiaohongshu was predominantly neutral. Most posts lacked explicit moral framing. However, when moral elements were invoked, significant associations with sentiment emerged. Posts invoking autonomy and community were predominantly negative, whereas divinity-framed posts tended toward positive sentiment. These findings suggest that concerns about both personal autonomy constraints and communal obligations contribute to negative marriage attitudes in contemporary China, offering insights for culturally informed policies addressing marriage decline.
title Marriage Discourse on Chinese Social Media: An LLM-assisted Analysis
topic General Economics
Economics
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.23609