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

TL;DR

This study analyzes a large dataset of Chinese social media posts to understand sentiment and moral themes related to marriage decline, revealing platform differences and moral influences on public attitudes.

Contribution

It introduces LLM-assisted content analysis applying moral ethics framework to large-scale social media data on marriage in China, uncovering moral and sentiment patterns.

Findings

Weibo posts are more positive than Xiaohongshu posts.

Posts invoking autonomy and community tend to be negative.

Divinity-related posts are generally positive.

Abstract

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.