Responses to self-praise on Chinese social media

Abstract

Self-praise is a very common practice on social media and has attracted researchers’ attention in recent years. In contrast, how interlocutors respond to other netizens’ self-praise on social media has rarely been explored. This study investigates internet users’ responses to online self-praise by examining a dataset of 569 netizens’ self-praise responses to 75 self-praising microblogs collected from the Chinese social media platform Weibo. The study examines the strategies of users’ responses to bloggers’ self-praise and whether bloggers’ self-praise strategies influence netizens’ responses. It was found that Chinese netizens responded to self-praising blogs with various strategies, including compliment, congratulation, inquiry/remark, evasion, and challenging. The findings showed that netizens’ self-praise responses varied with the categories of self-praise strategies. Possible factors motivating the various strategies involved in netizens’ self-praise responses are also discussed. The study contributes to the literature on self-praise interaction and speech act responses.