Analysis of Negative Emotion Transferring in Chinese Social Media

Haoyu Wang

University College Dublin (Kaplan), Singapore, 228095, Singapore

Keywords: Negative Emotion, Social Media Quarrel, Political and Social Issues.

Abstract: The social media conflict between different social media users becomes a critical issue in Chinese social

media platform. International scholars are making numbers of research on the social media quarrel and

arguing, but the research result from foreign countries might not be effectively explain the social media quarrel

in China. Thus, this research is based on the previous findings from foreign researchers to construct a research

framework for a quantitative analysis of Chinese social media users’ arguing behavior. A linear regression

analysis has been applied to analysis the relationship between the arguing behavior and specific social media

using behavior. The research found that increase of discussion of political issues and social events causes the

rise of transmission of negative attitudes. The research found that decreasing the discussion of the political

contents and social event issues can effectively decrease the social media quarrel in Chinese social media

platform.

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Research Background

Chinese citizens need TikTok, Weibo, WeChat and

other types of social media platforms to communicate

with their relatives and friends. The social media also

becomes a key channel which replaces the traditional

media to receive information from others. In social

media platforms, discussion groups are formed based

on different sub-culture. The rise of the sub-culture

groups leads to the commitment to different values

and beliefs in this movement. Netizens are formed

into digital right-wing and left-wing groups who

emphasize the correctness of a particular type of

political ideology and the government structure

which constructed based on certain political ideology

(Poell et al., 2014). With the continuous expanding of

the function of social media, social media influencers

are starting to promote unique value or belief from the

sub-culture groups which lead to a further quarrel in

Chinese social media platforms.

The recent research explained the rise of the

quarrel frequency in social media from different

perspectives. Myrick et al. (2016) recognizes the

quarrel and insulting in the social media as a process

to express the personal emotion. The internet users

are trying to express their negative attitude at social

media in order to find the social support. However,

the use of the digital media in this era leads people to

be more emotional on the social events and specific

political issue, which cause the rise of the expression

of the negative attitude in social media. The

expression of negative attitude finally causes a

quarrel. The text should fit exactly into the type area

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1.2 Research Objectives

Through the implementation of the quantitative

research method, it will analysis on the speed of

spreading the positive attitude and negative attitude in

the social media using period. In addition, with the

involvement of the quantitative research analysis the

survey data, the relationship between the comment

posting behavior and the frequency of social media

usage will also be identified. The research will

analysis the transmission of the negative emotion in

the social media which causes the rise of oppositions

between netizens, then identify the correlation

between the rise of the opposition between netizens

and frequency of the social media usage.

Wang, H.

Analysis of Negative Emotion Transferring in Chinese Social Media.

DOI: 10.5220/0013992900004916

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Public Relations and Media Communication (PRMC 2025), pages 437-441

ISBN: 978-989-758-778-8

437

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Connective Action at Social Media

Through the analysis the social media social

movement actions, it founds those emotional contents

is easier to spread in the social media, specially when

the emotional contents aligns with an individual's

affective state on social media,(Benett & Segerberg,

2013). Spreading a negative attitude toward particular

incident, such as sharing or commenting on particular

incident with negative review is faster, since the

negative attitude on particular ideology, social event

or policy can easily to make an individual to have a

strong offensive feeling which motivate them to make

a quick response to protect their personal interests. In

addition, once the social media is formed into a

negative emotional culture, the connective actions of

sharing negative perspective of actions will be more

likely to happen, since individuals will have a lower

level of resistance of negative information, compared

with the positive information. The information with

negative attitude will be unlikely to be questioned or

critical analyzed by social media users (Shahin & Ng,

2022). The research found Chinese social media

formed a negative emotional atmosphere, because

part of the social media influencers is sharing

negative contents related with different types of social

events and government policies (Yin et al., 2022).

2.2 The Emotional Expression in Social

Media

The social opposition is a regular issue on social

media which usually causes a strong emotional

expression for each side of social media users. By

recognizing the social media as a public sphere, social

media users are promoting different types of

information which maintains a strong conflict in

values and beliefs, which finally causes the

expression of both negative and positive emotion. By

accepting the information which involved a specific

value or idea, it will be possible to form a strong

opposition from social media users to others with

different values and beliefs. The opposite sides in the

social media can easily rise against each other based

on the different values and beliefs in a social incident.

The opposite side in the social media always exists

despite the nature of the event or the goal of a social

movement from social media (Gainous et al., 2018).

The social media comments and communication

usually maintains no specific relationship with the

real mood from the real life. There is only a weak

relationship for social media users to connect the real

life emotion with the posts made in social media

(Beasley & Mason, 2015). In the research on the

emotional expression of the social media, it mainly

reflects that individuals are not likely to present the

negative attitude or emotion in the social media post,

the research found that people may involve positive

emotion at social media platform. However, for

specific topics, especially when the topic is highly

related to the celebrities, social issues and the

government policy, the negative emotional

expression is higher(De Choudhury et al., 2012).

Wollebæk et al. (2019) mentioned, the increase of

the frequency of social media usage can lead to the

increase of the frequency of the emotional responding

in online communication. The high level of frequency

of social media usage can lead users to have strong

interest on making emotional response. Also, Song

(2016) mentioned, Chinese social media users are not

expressing the same emotion equally, the negative

emotion is commonly expressed in the social media

using period, which lead to the increase of the

arguments in between different individuals.

2.3 The Arguing in Social Media

Visser & Mirabile (2004) emphasizes, in the social

networking process or the personal interaction, the

person who maintains a strong negative attitude to

particular policy and information will be likely to

participate in the arguing and debating, compared

with the individuals who maintains positive

emotions, especially when the topic is related with

particular social events or the issuance of policies.

The research from Cionea et al. (2017) mentioned, the

arguing behavior usually happened in the social

media platform, especially when social media users’

emotion is impacted by the social media contents. As

Bail et al. (2018) mentioned, with the accessing of the

short message from the social media, the social media

users will be likely to form the political attitudes,

which lead them to arguing on the policies or social

issues which conflict with their political interest.

Thus, the research on the social events and political

discussion found that those two topics might be the

major topic which lead to the spread of positive and

negative attitudes.

3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research Approach

This research will involve a quantitative approach.

The involvement of the quantitative research will be

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more effective to identity the change of attitudes from

individuals on particular social issue. The

development of the general trends from the

quantitative research is the strategy to identify the

correlation between different objects with a lower

level of biases. Thus, the identification of the general

trends of the social media attitude and the social

media user opposition should rely on the development

of the quantitative research.

3.2 Survey Design and Data Sampling

The snowball method will be applied in the sampling

process. The current research topic is suitable for

snowball sampling method. In general, the research

topic is mainly related to the rising of the social

opposition in the social events, thus the survey

samples will be individuals who participated in the

social event discussion in the social media

commenting or the chat room from social media. As

Parker et al. (2019) mentioned, the snowball method

is one of the important method which select the

individuals who are sharing the similar social

experience or having similar behavior. Thus, the

snowball sampling method will be implemented in

order to analysis the current research topic.

3.3 Data Collection

The data collection will be practiced through the

distribution of survey. In this research, it will

distribute the survey to selected samples. The sample

of this survey is recognized as individuals who are in

the age between 18 to 46, Chinese citizens in this

range of age are the active social media users, which

are likely to have a frequent access to the social media

for information receiving and online communication.

The survey will collect 384 surveys from the selected

samples in order to testify to the change of attitudes in

the social media communication.

3.4 Data Analysis

The linear regression will be recognized as the major

data analysis tool to analysis the established hypnosis.

The P-value will be the major statistic metric to

evaluate the data. The P-value which is lower than

0.001 will be recognized as the variables which are

highly related to each other. In addition, in this

research, the coefficient will also be used to decide

the level of transmission of the negative and positive

attitude in the social media communication process.

4 RESULTS

4.1 Descriptive Data

In this survey, there are 385 surveys are collected

through the online channel, 56.1% of the survey

participants are Chinese male social media users and

43.91% of the survey participants are Chinese female

social media users. In this survey, the social media

users are mainly in the age range between 18 to 25

years old. The social media users who are under 18

years old is 0.78%. In addition, the individuals who

are in the age above 40 is 5.45%. Furthermore, in the

survey, the majority of participants are national

owned firm (20.26%), large size private firm

(14.03%) and cross country firms (13.51%). There

are also citizens who worked at Chinese government

sector as civil servant, volunteers from non-profit

organizations, and Chinese public organizations. In

general, the data mainly collected the social media

users from different types of working positions in the

current period. The negative attitudes are likely to

maintain a strong impact on the discussion of social

issues and political events, which lead to the rise of

argument in between individuals.

4.2 Linear Regression Analysis

Table 1. Regression analysis.

Coe

icients Standard Erro

t Sta

-value

Intercep

0.26 0.08 3.12 0.002

Information sharing behavio

0.07 0.03 1.93 0.054

Sharing negative information 0.29 0.05 5.88 0.000

Sharing positive information 0.19 0.05 3.60 0.000

The frequenc

of social media usa

e 0.35 0.06 5.72 0.000

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439

First, the information sharing behavior in the

research is recognized as an independent variable.

This independent variable maintains a low level of

correlation with the rising of the arguing in the social

media discussion of the social events. The P-value of

the information sharing behavior is 0.054 which is

significantly higher than 0.001. In this circumstance,

the information sharing behavior which conducted by

social media users contains no relationship with the

arguing in the social media platform for social issues.

According to the current research results in the

table 1, the research found that the receiving of the

negative information and positive information were

maintaining a strong relationship with the rise of the

arguments in the social media on the social event

discussion. The receiving of negative information and

receiving of position information are positively

correlated with the dependent variable of rising of

argument in the commenting area and chatting room.

In general, despite of the nature of the information,

whether the positive or negative attitude is involved

in the discussion, it will be possible to lead to the rise

of the arguments. However, by viewing the

coefficient of receiving information with negative

attitude and the receiving information with positive

attitude, it maintains a different level of impact to the

rising argument in the discussion of the social event.

The coefficient of the independent variable for

receiving negative information maintains a

coefficient of 0.2909, but the receiving positive

information only maintains a coefficienct of 0.1874.

In this circumstance, it reflects that the information

which is transformed by the social media which is

positive information is less likely to cause the

argument compared with the information which

involve the negative attitude. Thus, the H1 and H2

can be approved through the current linear regression

analysis.

In addition, the research found that the frequency

of the social media usage also maintains a strong

impact on the rise of the argument in the social media.

In this part of the research, it found that individuals

with a strong focus on arguing with the others.

Greater participation in online controversies is

associated with a higher frequency of social media

use, because the p-value is significantly lower than

0.001. Thus, the H3 can be approved due to the high

level of significance in this part of data analysis.

5 DISCUSSION

The research found that citizens may receive the

information with a negative attitude in the social

media platform compared to the possibility to receive

the information with positive attitude in the current

period. From this perspective, it reflects that Chinese

social media platform maintains no significant

differences with the foreign social media platform in

the current period. The social media platform is

purely driving by the emotion, and especially the

negative emotion from the social media users

motivates social media users to participate in the

argument (Bnnett & Segerberg, 2013).

In addition, this research reflects that participation

of the social media arguing will also maintain a strong

relationship with the increase of frequency of using

social media in the current period. The high level of

using frequency for social media users to use the

social media will lead the Chinese netizens to be more

active to participate in the argument, even though the

previous research already proves that social media

users will not conceal the real emotion from the

personal life into the social media comment post and

social media discussion (Beasley & Mason, 2015).

But the increase of using the social media will still

cause the increase of the possibility of manipulation

from the social media to the social media users. The

designed information which are expressing the

negative attitude will still lead the social media users

to participate in the arguing and other activities which

lead to the opposition between different social

groups.

6 CONCLUSION

In conclusion, the research analyzes the discussion of

the social issues and social events in the social media.

The research found, the social issues is the key topics

which can lead a fast transmission of the negative

attitudes in between social media users. Even though

the social media users sharing behavior will not lead

to a further increase of the conflicts between the

social media users, the designed negative attitude

expression message in the social media will still

motivate social media users to participate in the

argument. In this circumstance, the rise of arguments

from the political events and social issues will need

to be decreased in the first place, otherwise, it will less

likely for social media users to avoid the arguing.

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