Burstiness in emotions: a case study on collective affective responses in Italian soccer fandoms

The bursty nature of emotions is rarely investigated outside cognitive and psychological studies. Therefore this work addresses a gap in the literature, investigating the phenomenon of emotional burstiness using tools from the analysis of complex systems, and considering as case-study soccer fans’ affective responses on social media. We reconstruct collective reactions on Instagram posts from official accounts of 40 Italian football teams during the first round of the 2023–2024 season – 20 teams from Serie B (the second tier of Italian Football) and the 20 most followed teams in Serie C (the third tier). With this data, we build sequences of emotional signals for four types of emotions: joy, anger, sadness, and fear. Our analysis reveals trends of anti-burstiness in expressions of joy among users, reflecting fans’ consistent support for teams, occasionally interspersed by bursts of anger and sadness, with no signals of fear. This preliminary investigation provides insights for the understanding of emotional dynamics in online discussions and team supporting in soccer leagues.