Analyzing Cultural, Linguistic, and Social Differences in Types of Support in English and Spanish Social Media Comments

ACL ARR 2025 May Submission4523 Authors

Abstract: Social support is a multifaceted construct involving emotional, appraisal, informational, and instrumental aid, which individuals derive from their social connections. This study explores how social support is expressed differently by English and Spanish speakers on the YouTube platform, emphasizing cultural and linguistic variations. Annotations of social issues alongside the four types of social support mentioned above were conducted by both human experts and ChatGPT, demonstrating substantial agreement. A chi-square test confirmed significant differences in the distribution of support types between the two languages. Further linguistic and psychological analysis using LIWC revealed distinct patterns of social processes, affect, and cultural markers associated with each support type across languages. Our findings highlight important cultural nuances in the expression of online social support and demonstrate the utility of advanced NLP tools for cross-linguistic social media analysis. This work contributes to a better understanding and design of culturally sensitive digital support systems.

Paper Type: Long

Research Area: Computational Social Science and Cultural Analytics

Research Area Keywords: NLP, LIWC, GPT,psycholinguistic

Contribution Types: Model analysis & interpretability, NLP engineering experiment, Data resources, Data analysis

Languages Studied: English, Spanish

Submission Number: 4523