Social media sentiment analysis of March Madness upsets

March Madness grips social media

March Madness gripped social media in 2023. Diehard basketball fans took to social to express their emotions and opinions throughout March. The tournament's fabled upsets provided social intelligence geeks like us an amazing opportunity to conduct audience segmentation and emotional analysis using Infegy Atlas.

For this brief, we focused on this year's most surprising and least anticipated upset: first-seeded Purdue’s defeat to sixteenth-seeded Fairleigh Dickinson University. This defeat marked only the second time in NCAA tournament history that a sixteenth-seeded team triumphed over a first-seeded one. This provoked intense reactions from the Purdue fanbase.

Purdue fans’ negativity overshadows Fairleigh Dickinson fans’ celebration

During our social listening dive, we found that fans’ social media outpourings were more focused on expressing negative responses surrounding a top-seeded team's loss rather than celebrating an underdog's victory. This reaction supports the theory of human negativity bias, i.e., humans tend to pay attention to more negative events than positive ones.

Additionally, negative emotions like anger or fear generally evoke strong reactions, which promote engagement from basketball fans. One social media, this translated into post volume. We found that both post volume and sentimental topic analysis corroborate that Purdue fans dwelled on the loss substantially more than Fairleigh Dickinson fans celebrated their victory on social media.

Purdue basketball overwhelms Fairleigh Dickinson post volume

After conducting an audience segment analysis over the last 90 days, we detected 127,795 posts attributed to Purdue Basketball fans, compared to a mere 1,094 posts from Fairleigh Dickinson basketball fans. First of all, this significant disparity suggests that Purdue Basketball has a more durable online following.

In addition, Purdue fans are more immersed in the team's online community. Despite the groundbreaking loss, there was substantial conversation from Purdue fans about their loss, while Fairleigh Dickinson fans fell relatively silent just days after the big win.

Social intelligence data on Purdue fan grievances

During our linguistic analysis of Purdue fan conversations, we found fixation on grievances associated with the game: we detected complaints against the referees and Purdue's offense and defense. The word “Purdue” itself showed up as the predominant negative keyword. The word "Fraud" appeared in the Fairleigh Dickinson negative sentiment word cloud, but diving into posts, we found that it actually referred to Purdue, not Fairleigh Dickinson itself.

Sentiment and Emotions analysis: “same but different” findings.

Infegy Atlas Sentiment Analysis and Emotion metrics of March Madness conversation reveal some intriguing results. A single event can elicit starkly contrasting feelings and emotions among fans of different teams. This showcases the power of these high-stakes moments in shaping fan experiences.

For example, we found that fanbases use the same hashtag, #cinderella, but with differing sentiments. Also, Emotions analysis revealed that surprise was a common emotion in conversation from both fanbases, but Purdue fans expressed predominantly negative sentiment, a natural outcome of their team's loss. Let’s take a closer look.

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