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

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.