'Fear and Disgust' : A corpus study of sentiment towards sporting events as expressed multimodally on 4chan’s /sp/ board

Peter CROSTHWAITE, Joyce CHEUNG

Research output: Book Chapters | Papers in Conference ProceedingsBook ChapterResearch

Abstract

4chan (www.4chan.org) is an anonymous online community posting images and text on a wide variety of topics, and is widely known as a hotbed of internet culture and memes alongside frequent off-site real-world activism. We apply a sentiment analysis to a multimodal corpus of 4chan’s sports board’s (/sp/) user coverage of the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s UFC 219 – ‘Cyborg Vs. Holm’, characterising how 4chan posters juxtapose text, image and videos while communicating their reactions to the event itself and to other posters as the fights during the event unfold, while showing how the meanings made in one mode are interwoven with the other modes co-present and co-operating in the event. The results shed light on the discourse practices within a typically shady corner of the internet population (as occupied by 4chan users), and contribute to a greater understanding of online sports discourse as mediated by thousands of users in (semi) real-time.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCorpus Approaches to the Language of Sports : Texts, Media, Modalities
EditorsMarcus Callies, Magnus Levin
PublisherBloomsbury Publishing Plc
Chapter10
Pages241-266
Edition1st
ISBN (Electronic)9781350088214, 9781350088221
ISBN (Print)9781350088207
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 19 Sept 2019

Publication series

NameCorpus and Discourse
PublisherBloomsbury Academic

Keywords

  • 4chan
  • multimodal corpora
  • sentiment analysis
  • computer mediated commmunication
  • Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC)

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