>>7884613 lb
Academic researchers analyze 4chan /pol/, entirely miss its essence
Link to research paper
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2001.07487.pdf
Link to the dataset
https://zenodo.org/record/3606810
We need more eyes on this 11-page academic paper that analyzes 4chan /pol/ over the period Jun 2016 - Nov 2019.
In my view, they miss the forest for the trees; in other words, they are so busy counting hate speech words, numbers of threads/posts/memes/countries, and frequently used words that they forget to analyze the power and impact of free speech. Ditto the humor, exhiliration of freedom, autism, political analysis, community impact, irony, normie repellents, bot posting, AI, opinion vs. fact, etc. Shitposting is totally ignored in the paper (especially if it doesn't include a meme). If they can't count it, it probably isn't worth counting (which is why business is plagued with beancounters while the company turns to mush - or maybe dried bean scum!).
They claim to analyze the content, but all they did was to collect a bunch of keywords that more appropriately belong in a simple word cloud rather than a true focus on topics.
They barely mention 8chan, but don't scrutinize it (perhaps a future paper?). Nor do they explain the sudden drop in the number of 4chan /pol/ threads and posts from 2017 to 2018 to 2019 (where Q broke away from 4chan /pol/ in Jan 2018).
They don't mention 8kun at all. No idea if they know where to find the /qresearch/ board on either 8kun or the old 8chan.
Hilarious comments to the paper from /pol/acks at:
http://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/240513437/hello
Toxicity score tool:
https://www.perspectiveapi.com/#/home
From the /pol/ack comments: "So is it possible to get a 1? I presume not since its likely an asymptotic barrier.
The nice thing about this is that it will allow us to qualitatively determine what the most offensive thing we can say is. Then we can optimize shitposts."