How do Economic Inequality and Urban-rural Inequality Affect Individual Psychology? An Analysis Based On WEIBO Big Data

Economic inequality adversely affects all aspects of people's lives, and the urban-rural gap perpetuated by China's persistent household registration system is exacerbating this trend in the country. The rise of social media has created an extensive database, which can be leveraged to delve deeper into individual psychology and behaviour. This research analyzed over 20 million Weibo blog posts, one of the major social media platforms in China, and investigated the linguistic patterns of users in inequality environment at the province level. The findings reveal a positive correlation between the degree of inequality in the environment and the usage of expressions related to death. Furthermore, these expressions may not be self-directed. And different facets of economic inequality appear to have a comparable impact on users' language usage.