Identity Construction of “Little Town Problem-Solvers” in Chinese Online Social Media Discourse

Examined identity construction around "little town problem-solvers" in Chinese social media discourse, spanning Douban/Weibo posts and related media narratives.

Examined identity construction around “little town problem-solvers” in Chinese social media discourse, spanning Douban/Weibo posts and related media narratives.

Highlights

  • Built a social-media corpus and conducted Python-based text analytics and sentiment modeling (SnowNLP), complemented with semi-structured interviews for triangulation.
  • Identified recurring linguistic patterns of boundary-making, social comparison, and stigmatization.
  • Showed platform dynamics and exam-centered evaluation amplify anxiety and negative self-perception.

Metadata

  • Context: Independent Project
  • Role: Project Lead and First Author
  • Timeline: Feb 2024 - Jun 2024