TITLE:
The Financial Digital Divide in the Social Media Era: A Cross-Language Comparative Study of FinBERT Based on Chinese and English Platforms
AUTHORS:
Xinyi Jin
KEYWORDS:
Social Media, Financial Digital Divide, FinBERT Model, Cross-Language Comparison, Platform Affordances
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Computer and Communications,
Vol.14 No.2,
February
28,
2026
ABSTRACT: In order to reveal the manifestations and mechanisms of the cross-language and cross-platform financial digital divide in the social media era, this study is supported by the theory of digital divide, media richness and platform affordances, selects 35,000 financial texts from 10 Chinese and English platforms, uses the unified fine-tuned bilingual FinBERT model combined with statistical testing, and conducts empirical research through progressive hypothesis verification. The research ensures comparability through unified corpus fine-tuning and cross-language alignment, and systematically tests the effects of language, platform, and their interaction. The results show that: Chinese users have lower financial terminology coverage, higher semantic ambiguity, and a gap in expression ability; algorithmic platforms are more likely to disseminate highly emotional and low-professional content, forming an information quality gap; language and platform interact significantly, and language itself is an independent influencing factor of the cognitive empowerment gap. This study expands the cross-linguistic research perspective on the financial digital divide, improves the quantitative measurement method of literacy, provides empirical support for platform optimization, financial science popularization and inclusive finance policy formulation, and points out the research limitations and follow-up directions.