Pathways to the emergence of online group polarization in sports events

Online group polarization surrounding sports events has emerged as a significant challenge for digital public opinion governance. Drawing on social combustion theory, the study identifies seven explanatory conditions: political triggers, news narrative frames, opinion leaders, capital intervention, first media, event attributes, and stakeholder participation. Using a sample of 24 recent high-profile sporting events, the study employs crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (cs QCA) to investigate the configurational pathways leading to online group polarization and to generate insights for its mitigation. The findings identify five distinct pathways through which online group polarization in sports events emerges, revealing two underlying generative mechanisms. The first is the “sensitive issues–emotional narrative” mechanism, while the second is the “non-sensitive issues–capital involvement” mechanism.