How Chinese online media users respond to carbon neutrality: a quantitative textual analysis of comments on Bilibili, a Chinese video sharing platform

• Main Author: Zha, Yiru
• Other Authors: School of Social Sciences
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Social sciences::Political science; Bilibili; Carbon Neutrality
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/170096
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This research investigates how users of Bilibili, a video sharing website based in China have responded to carbon neutrality. By conducting quantitative textual analyses on 3,311 comments on Bilibili using LDA topic extraction and content statistics, this research discovers that: (1) Bilibili users have assigned more weight to geopolitical topics (56.3%) than energy (22.0%) and environmental topics (21.7%). (2) When assessing carbon neutrality, Bilibili users considered geopolitical (53.8%) and energy factors (15.8%) more heavily than factors related to the class (9.2%), economy (8.9%), environment (8.7%), and definition (3.6%). (3) More Bilibili users had negative (64.6%) attitudes towards carbon neutrality, with only a small portion of them expressing positive (26.8%) and neutral (8.6%) attitudes. (4) Negative attitudes towards carbon neutrality were mainly driven by geopolitical concerns about the West's approach to China, other countries’ free-riding on China’s efforts and the West’s manipulation of rules, doubts about the feasibility of energy transition and suspicion of capitalists exploiting consumers through this concept. This research highlights the geopolitical concerns behind the environmental attitudes of Chinese people, deepening our understanding to psychological constructs and crisis sensitivity of Chinese people towards environmental issues.