What drives emotional escalation in crisis talk? Collectivenism, topics, and LLM-assisted measurement on Zhihu

Introduction: This study investigates the emotional responses expressed on Zhihu during the static management period of Shanghai's 2022 lockdown, focusing on the influence of cultural values, specifically individualism and collectivism, on the intensity of negative emotion. Methods: -means topic clustering, we analyzed 3,881 posts related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Results: The results reveal that overall, discussions were highly negative, with collectivist-oriented texts expressing stronger negative emotion than individualist-oriented texts, which were more neutral or positive. Additionally, we found that topics related to medical resources and COVID-19 policy implementation intensified negative emotion. The "daily life and work" topic emerged as a key moderator, further amplifying emotional differences between collectivism and individualism, with collectivism displaying more pronounced negative emotion and individualism showing more moderate emotional responses. Discussion: This research fills a gap in the existing literature by integrating individualism-collectivism into emotional intensity studies and highlights the potential for differentiated communication strategies by governments and platforms, particularly in addressing high-risk topics and engaging culturally diverse value groups.