A Cross‐Cultural Comparison Between Chinese and Russian Social Media Self‐Praise

ABSTRACT Although self‐praise is a prevalent speech act on social media, there is a dearth of research on self‐praise in Russian online communication. Additionally, few studies have investigated self‐praise from a cross‐cultural perspective. Therefore, to fill these research gaps, this study compares Chinese and Russian self‐praise practices on social media. The data comprised 200 self‐praise posts from the Chinese social media platform Sina Weibo by Chinese netizens and 200 self‐praise posts from the Russian social media platform VKontakte by Russian netizens. With respect to the cultural influences on self‐praise strategies, significant differences were observed between Chinese and Russian netizens in their use of modified explicit self‐praise and implicit self‐praise strategies. Concerning the cultural influences on self‐praise topics, statistically significant differences were found between Chinese and Russian netizens in competence and appearance/voice. This study further discusses potential socio‐cultural and politeness factors underlying the observed similarities and differences between Chinese and Russian self‐praise.