Exploring Weibo users’ attitudes toward lesbians and gays in Mainland China: A natural language processing and machine learning approach

Zheng, Quan; Guo, Ying; Wang, Zhen; Andrasik, Frank; Kuang, Ziyi; Li, Junyi; Xu, Sheng; Hu, Xiangen

doi:10.1016/j.chb.2021.107021

Cited by 16 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 52 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“… Ohlander et al (2005) argue that education elevates the tolerance of IWLG by teaching people to be more accepting of nonconformity and promoting greater cognitive complexity and complex reasoning to better evaluate different ideas. Some research has found that a higher level of education is usually associated with increased acceptance of IWLG ( Xie and Peng, 2018 ; Zhou and Hu, 2020 ; Zheng et al, 2022 ). Although China has made significant progress in increasing national educational level and reducing illiteracy, education development remains inconsistent and unequal across provinces.…”

Section: Literature Review and Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even though CSSR was decriminalized in 1997 and de-medicalized in 2001 in the Chinese mainland ( Xie and Peng, 2018 ), discrimination and stigmatization against individuals who are lesbian or gay (IWLG) appear to persist to a large extent in Chinese society ( Miles-Johnson and Wang, 2018 ; Ren et al, 2019 ). The continued stigma and discrimination harm not only the IWLG but society as well ( Zheng et al, 2022 ). Gaining a deeper understanding of public attitudes toward IWLG that can help guide development of policies and measures to maximize the effectiveness of actions to diminish and over time hopefully eradicate public discrimination against IWLG from a specific social psychological perspective is urgently needed and very important in contemporary Chinese society.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research focussing on particular locations (e.g., Beijing) or groups of select individuals (e.g., college students) have identified certain individual factors (e.g., gender, age, education level) that influence the attitudes toward IWLG in the Chinese mainland ( Lin et al, 2016 ; Xie and Peng, 2018 ; Hu and Li, 2019 ; Wang et al, 2020 ; Zhou and Hu, 2020 ; Lin and Wang, 2021 ; Liang et al, 2022 ; Zheng et al, 2022 ). However, China is a country that has 34 provincial-level administrative divisions, which vary significantly with respect to culture, economic development, and public opinion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques are effective methods for addressing and achieving the limitations and goals as mentioned earlier, respectively, of this field of research ( Zheng et al, 2022 ). They can do this by unobtrusively and accurately analyzing large amounts of human behavior data that is recorded constantly and non-intrusively on the Internet.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Status quo and predictors of Weibo users’ attitudes toward lesbians and gay men in 31 provinces in the Chinese mainland: Analysis based on supervised machine learning and provincial panel data

Zheng

Guo²,

Wang³

et al. 2023

Front. Psychol.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

IntroductionPublic attitudes toward consensual same-sex relations are crucial to lesbians’ and gay men’s rights and society’s well-being, but research addressing this topic in China is limited. We comprehensively explored the current status and predictors of Weibo users’ attitudes toward individuals who are lesbian or gay (IWLG) at the provincial level in the Chinese mainland.MethodsNatural language processing and machine learning techniques were incorporated to analyze 1,934,008 Weibo posts from January 1, 2010, to December 31, 2020, to evaluate Weibo users’ expressed attitudes toward IWLG in 31 provinces in the Chinese mainland guided by the ABC Model of attitude.ResultsAlthough the general attitudes, feelings, and support for the rights of Weibo users toward IWLG among different provinces were relatively positive, knowledge about IWLG was noticeably inaccurate. Economic development and educational level positively predicted certain aspects of attitudes at the provincial level.ConclusionWeibo users from different provinces are generally supportive and accepting of people who are gay and the rights of the gay community. However, considerable misconceptions and inaccurate knowledge of IWLG surfaced in Weibo users’ posts. Economic development and educational level were important predictors of specific attitudes toward IWLG at the provincial level. Increased efforts to address the unbalanced and insufficient development between different provinces could help reduce the public’s prejudice, stigma, and discrimination toward IWLG. Policies that facilitate greater implementation of Comprehensive Sexuality Education sequentially and effectively are suggested as well.

show abstract

Section: Literature Review and Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Status quo and predictors of Weibo users’ attitudes toward lesbians and gay men in 31 provinces in the Chinese mainland: Analysis based on supervised machine learning and provincial panel data

Zheng

Guo²,

Wang³

et al. 2023

Front. Psychol.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Chi and Hawk ( 2016 ) used the data of 2,644 Chinese university students and employed OLS to find that a higher frequency of internet use was correlated with a more positive attitude toward the same-sex behavior. Furthermore, Zheng et al ( 2022 ) employed the natural language processing and machine learning techniques to explore Weibo users' attitudes toward lesbian or gay, and the results suggested that these users had generally positive attitudes regarding the rights of lesbians and gays.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bridge of Rainbow: Association Between Internet-Based Social Media Use and Homosexuality Inclusion in China

Yao

Yang

2022

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

By using the nationally representative dataset of China Labor-force Dynamics Survey, this paper explored the relationship between internet-based social media use and Chinese people's homosexuality inclusion. Addressing endogeneity by using an instrumental variable approach, the results of instrumental variable-ordered probit model indicated that individuals' internet-based social media use had a positive and significant association with their homosexuality inclusion. Furthermore, the heterogeneity analysis revealed that the heterogeneous effects of internet-based social media use on homosexuality inclusion caused by income, gender, and region. The homosexuality inclusion of respondents with higher income, respondents of female gender, and respondents located in eastern region of China was found to be more evidently associated with internet-based social media use. The functional mechanism analysis suggested that the number of respondents' LGBT friends mediated the overall relationship between internet-based social media use and homosexuality inclusion. The robustness check showed that the results were robust cross different models. The findings in this paper provide new evidence that the effect of information technology development on individual perception and behavior in Chinese context.

show abstract

Intelligent Campus Blog Preprocessing Model

Li¹,

Zhu²,

You

et al. 2022

3D Imaging—Multidimensional Signal Processing and Deep Learning

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Exploring Weibo users’ attitudes toward lesbians and gays in Mainland China: A natural language processing and machine learning approach

Cited by 16 publications

References 52 publications

Status quo and predictors of Weibo users’ attitudes toward lesbians and gay men in 31 provinces in the Chinese mainland: Analysis based on supervised machine learning and provincial panel data

Status quo and predictors of Weibo users’ attitudes toward lesbians and gay men in 31 provinces in the Chinese mainland: Analysis based on supervised machine learning and provincial panel data

Bridge of Rainbow: Association Between Internet-Based Social Media Use and Homosexuality Inclusion in China

Intelligent Campus Blog Preprocessing Model

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About