Proceedings of the Eleventh International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2017) 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 ‡Roma Tre University †University College London Telefonica Research Cyprus University of Technology
[email protected], {j.onaolapo,e.decristofaro,g.stringhini}@cs.ucl.ac.uk, {nicolas.kourtellis,ilias.leontiadis,jeremy.blackburn}@telefonica.com,
[email protected] Abstract key features include anonymity, as no identity is associated with posts, and ephemerality, i.e., threads are periodically The discussion-board site 4chan has been part of the Internet’s pruned (Bernstein et al. 2011). 4chan is a highly influential dark underbelly since its inception, and recent political events have put it increasingly in the spotlight. In particular, /pol/, the ecosystem: it gave birth not only to significant chunks of “Politically Incorrect” board, has been a central figure in the Internet culture and memes, but also provided a highly visi- outlandish 2016 US election season, as it has often been linked ble platform to movements like Anonymous and the alt-right to the alt-right movement and its rhetoric of hate and racism. ideology. Although it has also led to positive actions (e.g., However, 4chan remains relatively unstudied by the scientific catching animal abusers), it is generally considered one of community: little is known about its user base, the content it the darkest corners of the Internet, filled with hate speech, generates, and how it affects other parts of the Web.