World-class sporting events as arenas of emotional eruptions on social media

Abstract

ABSTRACT Sporting events are arenas of emotional bursts, and social media is a place where such emotional irruptions of fans are encoded in their words and button clicks. This study investigates the use of Facebook reactions by sports fans during the most significant world-class sporting events in 2016: the UEFA Euro, the men’s football championship of Europe, and the Summer Olympics Games, a major international multi-sport event. Our research challenge is to find out how people react to sports content and underscore the importance of emotional processes in shaping collective outcomes. In the paper, we propose a model for measuring the intensity of emotional charge, in terms of Facebook reactions and virality, and the results show what Facebook users think and feel about both sports events. According to our findings, the Olympics are the sporting arena of “emotions of peace”, and the Euro is the sporting arena of “war of emotions”.