Live It Up: Analyzing emotions and language use in tweets during the soccerworld cup finals

Abstract

In this paper, we present a study to identify similarities and differences in how users express themselves on Twitter during two editions of the most watched sports events in the world, the finals of the FIFA Soccer World Cup of 2014 and 2018. Our findings suggest in 2014 users tended to post more negative content than in 2018, while less hateful and offensive messages were posted in 2018 than in 2014. This study also showcases the challenges of performing analysis of emotional reactions on sports-related posts due to the specificity of the colorful language employed by the fans.