Attention to social stratification in the public discourse: An empirical study based on big data of books (1949–2008)

Abstract Using the Chinese corpus of Google Books Ngram in line with other macro-level socioeconomic data, this paper examines and analyzes the trend of change in public discourse about social structure in China from 1949 to 2008, as well as the mechanism that influences this trend. We find that since the reform and opening-up, the official discourse on “class,” as constructed by the official ideology, has gradually declined, while the importance of a “stratum” discourse oriented toward the mass population has increased. Using principal component analysis, we generate an index for public attention on social strata and run it through a Granger causality test along with time-series data such as macro-level economic and political indicators. The results show that since the reform and opening-up, public attention to stratum has been influenced by the general trend of the economy, income disparity, and level of political participation. Income disparity influences public attention on stratum-related topics more than macro-level economic indicators do. Official intervention on public opinions does not affect public attention on the stratum, but the former is affected by the latter