Attitudinal negotiation: the analysis of online commentary videos about an international event on Chinese social media platform bilibili.com

Abstract This article proposes a paradigm of attitudinal analysis of commentary videos on a social media platform to illustrate attitudinal negotiation about a particular international event. It adopts a research-driven approach to evaluate verbal expressions of commentary videos concerning Japan’s discharge of nuclear-contaminated water into the sea posted on Chinese social media platform bilibili.com . The results show that the original appraiser might not be verified, but replaced by the influencer as the secondary appraiser, which features the subjectivity of social media. The appraised targets can be textually tracked or semantically interpreted. Their clusters unfold the development of themes in different phases and stages in digital discourses. The attitudinal value can be affected by sociocultural or ecological factor, the previous or subsequent utterances, or sarcasm. The clusters of attitudinal values could imply massive homogeneous groups in social media communication. The article offers insights for attitudinal analysis of other international events on social media.