Reddit, online talk and rational critical debate

Conference: Political Studies Association’s Media and Politics Annual Conference

Dates: 13-14 November 2013

Abstract:

In August 2012 President Barack Obama took to Reddit for a brief “Ask Me Anything” session as part of his re-election campaign. Within ten minutes there were 278 comments and overall the page received nearly 3 million hits on the day. Following the event, the Reddit team said they hoped the thread “will inspire other online communities and start-ups, and encourage other politicians to seek out more ways to talk directly with their constituents” (Reddit, 2012). Indeed the Reddit CEO, Yishan Wong, has publicly expressed his desire to “see reddit as a platform for universal human discourse, available to all” (Wong, 2012). Reddit.com is a community-managed social news and discussion website. It hosts ~55,000 individual communities and has accumulated over 55 million unique visitors from over 175 different countries since its foundation in 2005. Whilst there is a wide range of scholarly literature on online discussion in different forms and their ability to engender public sphere(s), none has thus far provided a detailed critique of Reddit.

This research sought to examine Reddit’s ability to facilitate inclusive online talk and rational-critical debate through a multi-method study into the structures and communicative dynamics of its platform. Drawing on Poor (2005), Papacharissi (2004) and Salter’s (2004) elaborations of online public spheres, it features a content analysis of 1,000 comments across 20 of the default subreddits (smaller communities based around interest, location or characteristics). This reveals a) that the website encourages discussion based on merit as opposed to status, b) significant differences between the types of comments posted across subbredits, and c) that at least 50% of the default subreddits exhibits characteristics associated with rational-critical debate.

Source: Manual

Preferred by: Einar Thorsen