Geographic Differences in Place Signaling, Inquiry, and Replies: Evidence from Douyin Comments on the Jiangsu City Football League

Background: When a local sports event attracts attention beyond its home region, viewers may participate in different ways. This study examined geographic differences in expressions of connection to the host region, questions, and associations with receiving replies. Methods: We analyzed 29,817 comments from 96 Douyin videos observed between 10 May and 29 June 2025; geographic analyses included 29,371 mainland-labeled comments. Text rules were validated against 600 adjudicated human-coded comments. Results: Place signaling was more common in Jiangsu-labeled comments (7.05% vs. 1.03%), whereas inquiry was more common in other-mainland comments (12.52% vs. 8.92%). Place-signaling rule precision and recall were 0.694 and 0.793; inquiry precision was 0.963, but recall was 0.368. Correcting for rule error preserved the place-signaling difference but largely removed the inquiry difference. Inquiry differences did not vary with video posting time. On the probability scale, the reply association of place signaling was 10.4 percentage points more positive in Jiangsu, and that of inquiry 4.4 points larger outside Jiangsu; after misclassification correction, both kept their direction but were imprecise. Conclusions: Geographic context was robustly associated with place signaling; its association with how expressions related to replies was suggestive but uncertain. Organizers could retain local references while making their meanings easier for unfamiliar viewers to follow.