Discussion themes and emotional expressions on Chinese social media regarding AI virtual companions: a topic modeling and sentiment analysis study
Yue Sun, Jun Liu, Ting Liu, Zhengqi Wei, Huajie Shen · 2026
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Description
Yue Sun and coauthors mine in 2026 Chinese social media discussion of AI virtual companions to map what users talk about and how they feel. Surveys miss the spontaneous language of real use, so the team collected over twenty thousand comments under 168 Xiaohongshu posts. Topic modeling and sentiment analysis were combined, with human review to consolidate the topics.
Twenty-nine topics grouped into seven broader experience categories. Monetization and platform mechanics drew the most discussion, followed by relationship memory and continuity and virtual romance themes. Sentiment was scored with a Chinese language model tuned on hand-labeled comments, revealing the emotional structure behind the companionship market.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Yue Sun, Jun Liu, Ting Liu, Zhengqi Wei, Huajie Shen |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 87 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |