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Sports, politics, and social media: A Human-AI collaborative analysis of consumer reactions to Trump's break 50 appearance

Author

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  • Qian, Tyreal Yizhou
  • Gong, Hua
  • Xu, Chenglong

Abstract

This study investigates consumer engagement on social media platforms in response to Donald Trump's participation in Bryson DeChambeau's Break 50 golf series, focusing on audience interpretation of politically infused sports entertainment. Drawing on framing theory and stereotype content model (SCM), we systematically examined YouTube and Instagram comments through an innovative human-AI collaboration pipeline integrating BERTopic, reasoning-enhanced large language models (LLMs), LLM fine-tuning, and embedding-based semantic evaluations. Our analysis identified three distinct generic frames, entertainment, politics/controversy, and athletics, each eliciting unique warmth and competence evaluations. Entertainment frames consistently occupied SCM's admiration quadrant, whereas political discourse more often aligned with contempt. However, several issue-specific frames deviated from traditional SCM profiles, revealing nuanced audience perceptions such as warm-but-incompetent and cold-but-competent stereotypes. Cross-platform comparisons uncovered evaluative reversals, indicating that perceptions of Trump shifted with platform norms and audience composition. Theoretically, the findings extend framing theory by illustrating how audiences actively co-construct meaning in politically salient entertainment contexts, while reaffirming SCM's utility in analyzing spontaneous digital discourse. Methodologically, we demonstrate a scalable, replicable human-AI workflow for large-scale, theory-driven social media analysis. Practically, the results offer insights for content creators, sports marketers, and political strategists seeking to navigate the reputational opportunities and risks of aligning with polarizing figures in cross-platform media environments.

Suggested Citation

  • Qian, Tyreal Yizhou & Gong, Hua & Xu, Chenglong, 2026. "Sports, politics, and social media: A Human-AI collaborative analysis of consumer reactions to Trump's break 50 appearance," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joreco:v:88:y:2026:i:c:s0969698925002991
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104520
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