Content Diversity and Hostile Language in Messi and Ronaldo Discussions on Bilibili and Reddit
Abstract
This study examined online fan discussions about football on Bilibili and Reddit, two platforms that have recommender systems that select and rank online content to expose users to information. Specifically, the online discussions about Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo were analyzed to examine issues related to diversity and bias in online information exposure. In total, 200 online posts (50 posts in each of the four groups: Bilibili-Messi, Bilibili-Ronaldo, Reddit-Messi, and Reddit-Ronaldo) and 287 comments that were linked to 97 Reddit posts were analyzed. The findings showed that there were considerable differences in the topics of online discussions between the two players on Bilibili but not on Reddit. In terms of the way online content was presented, clickbait cues were found in 33% of the online posts in the Messi group and 36% of the posts in the Ronaldo group. Post-level attack flags were found in only 3% of the posts in the Messi group and 2% of the posts in the Ronaldo group. The findings of this study identified several dimensions that future studies on exposure audits can use to examine online information exposure. However, several limitations were found, including the use of different sampling frames, lack of body text in many of the online posts, and the need to validate the coding. In addition, the content was collected from the chronological search results and community listings on the two platforms. Therefore, the findings did not provide evidence of how personalized recommendations created uneven information exposure among users. Even though this study does not examine the information exposure by recommender systems in more detail, it provides a descriptive basis for such an audit on football-related topics, view points and presentation forms.
References
- Möller, J., Trilling, D., Helberger, N., & van Es, B. (2018). Do not blame it on the algorithm: An empirical assessment of multiple recommender systems and their impact on content diversity.Information, Communication & Society, 21(7), 959-977.
- Rathje, S., Van Bavel, J. J., & van der Linden, S. (2021). Out-group animosity drives engagement on social media.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(26), e2024292118.
- Chen, J., Dong, H., Wang, X., Feng, F., Wang, M., & He, X. (2023). Bias and debias in recommender system: A survey and future directions.ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 41(3), Article 67.
- Mansoury, M., Abdollahpouri, H., Pechenizkiy, M., Mobasher, B., & Burke, R. (2020). Feedback loop and bias amplification in recommender systems.Proceedings of the 29th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, 2145-2148. https://doi.org/10.1145/3340531.3412152
- Nyhan, B., Settle, J., Thorson, E., Wojcieszak, M., Barberá, P., Chen, A. Y., Allcott, H., Brown, T., Crespo-Tenorio, A., Dimmery, D., Freelon, D., Gentzkow, M., González-Bailón, S., Guess, A. M., Kennedy, E., Kim, Y. M., Lazer, D., Malhotra, N., Moehler, D., . . . Tucker, J. A. (2023). Like-minded sources on Facebook are prevalent but not polarizing.Nature, 620, 137–144.
- Hayat, T. (Z.), Samuel-Azran, T., Laor, T., & Galily, Y. (2024). Unveiling the intersection of individual stardom and team loyalty in social network reflections: The case of soccer-stars Ronaldo and Messi.American Behavioral Scientist.
- Brady, W. J., Wills, J. A., Jost, J. T., Tucker, J. A., & Van Bavel, J. J. (2017). Emotion shapes the diffusion of moralized content in social networks.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(28), 7313-7318.
- Chakraborty, A., Paranjape, B., Kakarla, S., & Ganguly, N. (2016). Stop clickbait: Detecting and preventing clickbaits in online news media.Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM), 9-16.
- Massanari, A. (2017). #Gamergate and the Fappening: How Reddit's algorithm, governance, and culture support toxic technocultures.New Media & Society, 19(3), 329-346.
- Cialdini, R. B., Borden, R. J., Thorne, A., Walker, M. R., Freeman, S., & Sloan, L. R. (1976). Basking in reflected glory: Three (football) field studies.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34(3), 366-375.
- Coe, K., Kenski, K., & Rains, S. A. (2014). Online and uncivil? Patterns and determinants of incivility in newspaper website comments.Journal of Communication, 64(4), 658-679.
- Grimmer, J., & Stewart, B. M. (2013). Text as data: The promise and pitfalls of automatic content analysis methods for political texts.Political Analysis, 21(3), 267-297.