{"title":"在线赌博论坛作为减少伤害的潜在目标:reddit.com论坛的探索性自然语言处理分析。","authors":"Mark van der Maas, Jim Samuel","doi":"10.1186/s12954-025-01220-0","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objectives: </strong>Globally, there has been a rapid increase in the availability of online gambling. As online gambling has increased in popularity, there has been a corresponding increase in online communities that discuss gambling. The movement of gambling and communities interested in gambling to online spaces presents new challenges to harm reduction. The current study analyses a forum from a popular online forum hosting website (reddit.com) to determine its suitability as a source for data to inform gambling harm reduction in online spaces.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>The current study provides an exploratory analysis of 1,141 unique posts and 11,668 comments collected from the online forum r/onlinegambling. The dataset covers posts and comments from August 5, 2015, to October 30, 2023. Natural language processing (NLP) techniques were used to identify common terms and phrases, identify topics with high rates of participant engagement and perform a sentiment analysis of posts and comments.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Sentiment analysis results showed that the majority of posts and comments were positive, but there were substantial numbers of negative and neutral content. Positive content was often congratulatory and focused on winning, neutral posts more commonly focused on practical advice, and negative posts were more commonly concerned with avoiding operators perceived as illegitimate by forum participants.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Results from this study show that there is a varied and robust discussion of different aspects of gambling on r/onlinegambling. Our exploratory analyses suggest that this reddit forum provides important information on how users communicate motivations to gamble, interpretations of gambling experiences, and define potential harms related to gambling online as well as how to avoid or remedy those harms. Reddit forums discussing gambling have great potential for future research interested in more specific aspects of harm reduction and prevention related to online gambling, particularly when using NLP techniques.</p>","PeriodicalId":12922,"journal":{"name":"Harm Reduction Journal","volume":"22 1","pages":"77"},"PeriodicalIF":4.0000,"publicationDate":"2025-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12070730/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Online gambling forums as a potential target for harm reduction: an exploratory natural language processing analysis of a reddit.com forum.\",\"authors\":\"Mark van der Maas, Jim Samuel\",\"doi\":\"10.1186/s12954-025-01220-0\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"<p><strong>Objectives: </strong>Globally, there has been a rapid increase in the availability of online gambling. As online gambling has increased in popularity, there has been a corresponding increase in online communities that discuss gambling. The movement of gambling and communities interested in gambling to online spaces presents new challenges to harm reduction. The current study analyses a forum from a popular online forum hosting website (reddit.com) to determine its suitability as a source for data to inform gambling harm reduction in online spaces.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>The current study provides an exploratory analysis of 1,141 unique posts and 11,668 comments collected from the online forum r/onlinegambling. The dataset covers posts and comments from August 5, 2015, to October 30, 2023. Natural language processing (NLP) techniques were used to identify common terms and phrases, identify topics with high rates of participant engagement and perform a sentiment analysis of posts and comments.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Sentiment analysis results showed that the majority of posts and comments were positive, but there were substantial numbers of negative and neutral content. Positive content was often congratulatory and focused on winning, neutral posts more commonly focused on practical advice, and negative posts were more commonly concerned with avoiding operators perceived as illegitimate by forum participants.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Results from this study show that there is a varied and robust discussion of different aspects of gambling on r/onlinegambling. Our exploratory analyses suggest that this reddit forum provides important information on how users communicate motivations to gamble, interpretations of gambling experiences, and define potential harms related to gambling online as well as how to avoid or remedy those harms. Reddit forums discussing gambling have great potential for future research interested in more specific aspects of harm reduction and prevention related to online gambling, particularly when using NLP techniques.</p>\",\"PeriodicalId\":12922,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Harm Reduction Journal\",\"volume\":\"22 1\",\"pages\":\"77\"},\"PeriodicalIF\":4.0000,\"publicationDate\":\"2025-05-13\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12070730/pdf/\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Harm Reduction Journal\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"90\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12954-025-01220-0\",\"RegionNum\":2,\"RegionCategory\":\"社会学\",\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"Q1\",\"JCRName\":\"SUBSTANCE ABUSE\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Harm Reduction Journal","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12954-025-01220-0","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"SUBSTANCE ABUSE","Score":null,"Total":0}
Online gambling forums as a potential target for harm reduction: an exploratory natural language processing analysis of a reddit.com forum.
Objectives: Globally, there has been a rapid increase in the availability of online gambling. As online gambling has increased in popularity, there has been a corresponding increase in online communities that discuss gambling. The movement of gambling and communities interested in gambling to online spaces presents new challenges to harm reduction. The current study analyses a forum from a popular online forum hosting website (reddit.com) to determine its suitability as a source for data to inform gambling harm reduction in online spaces.
Methods: The current study provides an exploratory analysis of 1,141 unique posts and 11,668 comments collected from the online forum r/onlinegambling. The dataset covers posts and comments from August 5, 2015, to October 30, 2023. Natural language processing (NLP) techniques were used to identify common terms and phrases, identify topics with high rates of participant engagement and perform a sentiment analysis of posts and comments.
Results: Sentiment analysis results showed that the majority of posts and comments were positive, but there were substantial numbers of negative and neutral content. Positive content was often congratulatory and focused on winning, neutral posts more commonly focused on practical advice, and negative posts were more commonly concerned with avoiding operators perceived as illegitimate by forum participants.
Conclusions: Results from this study show that there is a varied and robust discussion of different aspects of gambling on r/onlinegambling. Our exploratory analyses suggest that this reddit forum provides important information on how users communicate motivations to gamble, interpretations of gambling experiences, and define potential harms related to gambling online as well as how to avoid or remedy those harms. Reddit forums discussing gambling have great potential for future research interested in more specific aspects of harm reduction and prevention related to online gambling, particularly when using NLP techniques.
期刊介绍:
Harm Reduction Journal is an Open Access, peer-reviewed, online journal whose focus is on the prevalent patterns of psychoactive drug use, the public policies meant to control them, and the search for effective methods of reducing the adverse medical, public health, and social consequences associated with both drugs and drug policies. We define "harm reduction" as "policies and programs which aim to reduce the health, social, and economic costs of legal and illegal psychoactive drug use without necessarily reducing drug consumption". We are especially interested in studies of the evolving patterns of drug use around the world, their implications for the spread of HIV/AIDS and other blood-borne pathogens.