A Characterization of Political Communities on Reddit | Proceedings of the 30th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (2024)

short-paper

Authors: Ahmed Soliman, Jan Hafer, Florian Lemmerich

HT '19: Proceedings of the 30th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media

Pages 259 - 263

Published: 12 September 2019 Publication History

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    Abstract

    The social news aggregator Reddit is among the most popular websites on the internet. Many online users use the platform to anonymously share and discuss (mostly US-centric) political content. In this ongoing work, we perform a comparative large-scale analysis of political subcommunities (subreddits) on Reddit using a dataset of more than 100 million posts from around 5 million users. In particular, we investigate these communities with respect to (1) the content posted, (2) their relationships to other subreddits, and (3) the distribution of attention received in these subcommunities. We find that left-leaning communities use derogatory language less often than right-leaning communities, but are more focused on news sources reflecting their own political leaning. We also observe that right-leaning communities are more interconnected with right-leaning subreddits on European politics. Finally, the attention of individual submissions (as measured by their number of up-votes or comments received) is spread more evenly in right-leaning communities.The social news aggregator Reddit is among the most popular websites on the internet. Many online users use the platform to anonymously share and discuss (mostly US-centric) political content. In this ongoing work, we perform a comparative large-scale analysis of political subcommunities (subreddits) on Reddit using a dataset of more than 100 million posts from around 5 million users. In particular, we investigate these communities with respect to (1) the content posted, (2) their relationships to other subreddits, and (3) the distribution of attention received in these subcommunities. We find that left-leaning communities use derogatory language less often than right-leaning communities, but are more focused on news sources reflecting their own political leaning. We also observe that right-leaning communities are more interconnected with right-leaning subreddits on European politics. Finally, the attention of individual submissions (as measured by their number of up-votes or comments received) is spread more evenly in right-leaning communities.

    References

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    Pablo Barbera, John T. Jost, Jonathan Nagler, Joshua A. Tucker, and Richard Bonneau. 2015. Tweeting From Left to Right: Is Online Political Communication More Than an Echo Chamber? Psychological Science, Vol. 26, 10 (2015), 1531--1542.

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    Cody Buntain and Jennifer Golbeck. 2014. Identifying Social Roles in Reddit Using Network Structure. In International Conference on World Wide Web (Companion). 615--620.

    Digital Library

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    Eszter Hargittai, Jason Gallo, and Matthew Kane. 2008. Cross-ideological discussions among conservative and liberal bloggers. Public Choice, Vol. 134, 1 (2008), 67--86.

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    Romain Lachat. 2018. Which way from left to right? On the relation between voters issue preferences and left-right orientation in West European democracies. International Political Science Review, Vol. 39, 4 (2018), 419--435.

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    Richard A. Mills. 2018. Pop-up political advocacy communities on reddit.com: SandersForPresident and The Donald. AI & SOCIETY, Vol. 33, 1 (2018), 39--54.

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    David Motadel. 2018. Nationalist Internationalism in the Modern Age. Contemporary European History, Vol. 28, 1 (2018), 77--81.

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    Rishab Nithyanand, Brian Schaffner, and Phillipa Gill. 2017a. Measuring offensive speech in online political discourse. In 7th $$USENIX$$ Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet ($$FOCI$$ 17) .

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    Rishab Nithyanand, Brian Schaffner, and Phillipa Gill. 2017b. Online political discourse in the Trump era. arXiv preprint arXiv:1711.05303 (2017).

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    Daniel Preoct iuc-Pietro, Ye Liu, Daniel Hopkins, and Lyle Ungar. 2017. Beyond Binary Labels: Political Ideology Prediction of Twitter Users. In Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics. 729--740.

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    Philipp Singer, Fabian Flöck, Clemens Meinhart, Elias Zeitfogel, and Markus Strohmaier. 2014. Evolution of Reddit: From the Front Page of the Internet to a Self-referential Community?. In International Conference on World Wide Web (Companion). 517--522.

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    • Sawicki JGanzha M(2024)Exploring Reddit Community Structure: Bridges, Gateways and HighwaysElectronics10.3390/electronics1310193513:10(1935)Online publication date: 15-May-2024
    • Song QMa RKou YGui X(2024)Collective Privacy Sensemaking on Social Media about Period and Fertility Tracking post Roe v. WadeProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36410008:CSCW1(1-35)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024

      https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3641000

    • Efstratiou AChua TNgo CKa-Wei Lee RKumar RLauw H(2024)Deliberate Exposure to Opposing Views and Its Association with Behavior and Rewards on Political CommunitiesProceedings of the ACM on Web Conference 202410.1145/3589334.3645375(2347-2358)Online publication date: 13-May-2024

      https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3589334.3645375

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    Index Terms

    1. A Characterization of Political Communities on Reddit

      1. Information systems

        1. World Wide Web

          1. Web mining

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      Published In

      A Characterization of Political Communities on Reddit | Proceedings of the 30th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (4)

      HT '19: Proceedings of the 30th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media

      September 2019

      326 pages

      ISBN:9781450368858

      DOI:10.1145/3342220

      • General Chairs:
      • Claus Atzenbeck

        Hof University, Germany

        ,
      • Jessica Rubart

        OWL University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Germany

        ,
      • Program Chair:
      • David E. Millard

        University of Southampton, UK

      Copyright © 2019 ACM.

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      Publication History

      Published: 12 September 2019

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      Author Tags

      1. politics
      2. reddit

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      A Characterization of Political Communities on Reddit | Proceedings of the 30th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (8)

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      • 28

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      Citations

      Cited By

      View all

      • Sawicki JGanzha M(2024)Exploring Reddit Community Structure: Bridges, Gateways and HighwaysElectronics10.3390/electronics1310193513:10(1935)Online publication date: 15-May-2024
      • Song QMa RKou YGui X(2024)Collective Privacy Sensemaking on Social Media about Period and Fertility Tracking post Roe v. WadeProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36410008:CSCW1(1-35)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024

        https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3641000

      • Efstratiou AChua TNgo CKa-Wei Lee RKumar RLauw H(2024)Deliberate Exposure to Opposing Views and Its Association with Behavior and Rewards on Political CommunitiesProceedings of the ACM on Web Conference 202410.1145/3589334.3645375(2347-2358)Online publication date: 13-May-2024

        https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3589334.3645375

      • Karjus ACuskley C(2024)Evolving linguistic divergence on polarizing social mediaHumanities and Social Sciences Communications10.1057/s41599-024-02922-911:1Online publication date: 15-Mar-2024
      • Bonifazi GCorradini EUrsino DVirgili L(2023)Modeling, Evaluating, and Applying the eWoM Power of Reddit PostsBig Data and Cognitive Computing10.3390/bdcc70100477:1(47)Online publication date: 9-Mar-2023
      • Sawicki JGanzha MPaprzycki MWatanobe Y(2023)Reddit CrosspostNet—Studying Reddit Communities with Large-Scale Crosspost Graph NetworksAlgorithms10.3390/a1609042416:9(424)Online publication date: 4-Sep-2023
      • Henn TPosegga O(2023)Attention-grabbing news coverage: Violent images of the Black Lives Matter movement and how they attract user attention on RedditPLOS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.028896218:8(e0288962)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2023
      • Ming YMatteson M(2023)The airing of grievances: A look at complaint behavior in library redditJournal of Librarianship and Information Science10.1177/09610006221149428(096100062211494)Online publication date: 24-Jan-2023
      • Suk JZhang YYue ZWang RDong XYang DLian R(2023)When the Personal Becomes Political: Unpacking the Dynamics of Sexual Violence and Gender Justice Discourses Across Four Social Media PlatformsCommunication Research10.1177/0093650223115414650:5(610-632)Online publication date: 18-Apr-2023
      • Bozarth LIm JQuarles CBudak C(2023)Wisdom of Two Crowds: Misinformation Moderation on Reddit and How to Improve this Process---A Case Study of COVID-19Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35796317:CSCW1(1-33)Online publication date: 16-Apr-2023

        https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3579631

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