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Donald Trump's election win prompts spike in use of F-word online, data shows

Inga Ting

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The stories that defined 2016

As 2016 comes to an end, we take a look back at the year that was.

Warning: This story contains language that may offend.

It was a year that most seemed happy to farewell. And with good reason.

From the chaos in Syria to the terrorist attacks in Europe, mass shootings in the US and the deaths of what seemed like all our favourite people, we collectively stumbled through 2016 with that mixture of horror, outrage, grief and incredulity that perhaps no other word in the English language captures more succinctly than "f---".

But one event in 2016 unleashed public outpouring of the F-word like no other, according to a new analysis of social media posts and online content: Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election.

While some readers may find profanity offensive, many researchers recognise that the use of language, including curse words, online and on social media can provide valuable insights into public sentiment.

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In an article published on medium.com, public relations professional Paul Stollery analysed the number of times the F-word was used in social media posts, news articles, blogs, and online comments and forums between January 1 and December 28, 2016.

"The field of f---s was far from barren in 2016. In fact, just shy of a billion f---s were given across social media [and] the news this year," he wrote.

On average, we gave just over 2.6 million f---s a day in 2016, rising above 3 million on only 14 days.

But on November 9, the day Mr Trump was elected US president, use of the F-word soared to 7.6 million, almost three times the average.

So enormous was the tsunami of f---s on November 9 that it dwarfed every other spike on the chart, eclipsing even that on June 24, the day the world awoke to the news that Britain had voted to leave the EU.

The internet gave just over 3.4 million f---s about Brexit, triggering the third-highest spike on the chart but still less than half the number given on November 9.

"It's an extremely powerful statement," Nick Enfield, chairman of the department of linguistics at Sydney University, said about the response to Mr Trump's election.

"This news was something the entire world had been focused on for months and months and months, awaiting the outcome of this dreaded thing. It was a massive emotional peak ... Everyone was radically stressed out by it and then the worst outcome happened for so many people."

The combined force of the long build-up and the shock result helped to explain why other, arguably more horrific events, such as the Bastille Day attack in Nice or the death and destruction in Syria, did not provoke a similar explosion of profanity, Professor Enfield said.

"To me, that was really the trigger: the pent-up emotion."

But what kind of emotions were unleashed that day? After all, the F-word can express all manner of feeling, from joy (f--- yeah) to anger (f--- off) to dismay (oh f---) and despair (f--- this).

Further analysis of the context in which the F-word was used revealed we mostly felt shock or disbelief: as in, "what the f---".

"WTF was the driving sentiment behind the use of the word," Mr Stollery said, referring to his analysis of the terms most commonly associated with the F-word after filtering out generic terms and short words such as 'the' and 'it'.

Professor Enfield said 'what the f---' was a unique linguistic item called a "marked expression".

"[It] indicates that your statement or question is something out of the ordinary," he said.

"People use words like that to cross a line they wouldn't normally, simply because they're grasping for a way to express a strength of emotion they don't express every day."

Twitter and Tumblr, both open networks, accounted for more than 90 per cent of the f---s captured in the data set.

"It was, for lack of a better phrase, a very shitty year ... The collective response to most of these things was: f---. At the time of writing [December 29], 946,158,697 f--- had been given (shared/commented/published in a blog or news article) in 2016," Mr Stollery wrote.

"It won't surprise you to know that the biggest day for f---- given was November 9, triggered by the election of Donald Trump. What might surprise you though, is just how many f---s were shared."