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arXiv:1610.03452cs.SI

Kek, Cucks, and God Emperor Trump: A Measurement Study of 4chan's Politically Incorrect Forum and Its Effects on the Web

Gabriel Emile Hine, Jeremiah Onaolapo, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Nicolas Kourtellis, Ilias Leontiadis, Riginos Samaras, Gianluca Stringhini, Jeremy Blackburn

Abstract

The discussion-board site 4chan has been part of the Internet's dark underbelly since its inception, and recent political events have put it increasingly in the spotlight. In particular, /pol/, the "Politically Incorrect" board, has been a central figure in the outlandish 2016 US election season, as it has often been linked to the alt-right movement and its rhetoric of hate and racism. However, 4chan remains relatively unstudied by the scientific community: little is known about its user base, the content it generates, and how it affects other parts of the Web. In this paper, we start addressing this gap by analyzing /pol/ along several axes, using a dataset of over 8M posts we collected over two and a half months. First, we perform a general characterization, showing that /pol/ users are well distributed around the world and that 4chan's unique features encourage fresh discussions. We also analyze content, finding, for instance, that YouTube links and hate speech are predominant on /pol/. Overall, our analysis not only provides the first measurement study of /pol/, but also insight into online harassment and hate speech trends in social media.

arXiv comments
A shorter version of this paper appears in the Proceedings of the 11th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM'17). Please cite the ICWSM'17 paper. Corresponding author: blackburn@uab.edu
Journal reference
DOI
Subjects
cs.SISocial and Information Networks cs.CYComputers and Society cs.HCHuman-Computer Interaction physics.soc-phPhysics and Society

On Hacker News

Linked by 3 identifiable commenters in 3 comments across 3 threads, from Jan 2017 to Jul 2022. Found in 3 HN submissions from Oct 2016 to Oct 2016. Open submission discussions.

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Discussed in comments3 threads

  1. Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior 1 comment

    • It doesn’t seem unreasonable to extrapolate this finding to other areas of society where a small percentage of people write their opinions and then a much larger percent of people read them, eventually shaping aggregate opinion independently of any opinion held predominantly by…

      TechBro8615View on HNParent context

  2. A Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and Its Effects on the Web [pdf] 1 comment

    • Previously on HN (2016): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12705851 Original version of the paper with "rare pepes": https://arxiv.org/pdf/1610.03452.pdf

      anon6778View on HNParent context

  3. An Analysis of Anonymity and Ephemerality in 4chan /b/ (2011) [pdf] 1 comment

    • There is one. Sadly nobody has studied the most important and cultural board, /jp/. https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.03452

      astrangeView on HNParent context

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