Playing to Save Sisters: How Female Gaming Communities Foster Social Support within Different Cultural Contexts

Gender bias frequently exists in gaming culture, and online communities have formed separatist safe spaces to provide female players with social support. This study is based on text mining of female player communities on two platforms, Reddit and Douban. Text analysis methods containing Structural Topic Model and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count were employed to explore how social support is presented and how topics and language features – including community identity, affection, and gender-related expressions – influence the social support that a post receives. Similarities and differences in these relationships are compared between two communities, representing Western individualist and Chinese collectivist cultures.