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Updated: May 12, 2026

An Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effects of Ageing on Sentence Processing
Published on: October 25, 2019
From macro aging narratives to personal response scripts: A process model from bilibili comment discourse
Zhangwei Zheng1, Qin Lingda Tan2, Hafizuddin-Syah B A M2
1Sunway Business School, Sunway University, Sunway City, Selangor, 47500, Malaysia; Faculty of Economics and Management, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Selangor, 43600, Malaysia.
Abstract:
Population aging is widely discussed as a structural challenge, yet less is known about how it becomes a personally consequential issue for younger cohorts before late-life constraints are directly experienced. Using naturally occurring discourse from Bilibili, a major Chinese user-generated video platform, this study analyzes 1800 de-identified comments from 10 high-interaction videos through an inductive, constructivist grounded theory-informed approach. The analysis identifies a four-stage process in which aging is framed as a credible public problem, personalized into self-relevant stakes, appraised in terms of feasibility and agency, and stabilized into distinct discourse-level response scripts. Institutional credibility structures the initial interpretive ground; personalization is driven mainly by intergenerational burden, future-self projection, and moral contestation; and appraisal turns on cost thresholding, time-energy depletion, and perceived scope for action. The study advances process theorizing by explaining why similar macro signals yield divergent anticipatory orientations in everyday discourse.
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