Track papers across labs, topics, and trends.
Search papers, labs, and topics across Lattice.
This study analyzes sentiment variation in NFL-related tweets from 2011 to 2014, revealing how factors such as geography and game outcomes shape public opinion toward teams. The research identifies a "fandom radius" for each team, highlighting regions with heightened engagement, and tracks sentiment trajectories that diverge based on game outcomes. Key findings show that while sentiment for both winning and losing teams is initially positive, it declines at kickoff, with winning teams experiencing a sentiment rebound by game end, contrasting with the persistent negativity for losing teams.
Winning teams see a surge in fan sentiment as the game progresses, while losing teams face a stark decline, illustrating the emotional rollercoaster of fandom on social media.
Online fandom communities influence public opinion toward movies, musicians, and sports teams. Using a corpus of game-referencing tweets, we measure variation in sentiment toward National Football League (NFL) teams driven by geography, game outcomes, and team performance for the 2011--2014 NFL seasons. We estimate a fandom radius for each team, identifying regions where engagement exceeds background levels of discussion. We find sentiment for both winning and losing teams is positive immediately prior to games, drops at kickoff, and rebounds slightly during halftime. After halftime however, the trajectories diverge: Sentiment for winning teams increases toward the end of the game, while sentiment for losing teams remains low, though both end up below their start of game levels. Finally, a comparison between sentiment and win percentage reveals a weak positive relationship, suggesting that while team success contributes to fandom happiness, other factors also influence how fans discuss the NFL on social media. Our work contributes to a growing body of computational social science research that quantifies the many aspects of modern fandom.