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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 19: Social Systems, Opinion and Group Dynamics II

SOE 19.3: Vortrag

Donnerstag, 30. März 2023, 17:15–17:30, ZEU 260

Reddit Revisited — João Pinheiro Neto and •Riccardo Carlucci — Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Am Faßberg 17, 37077 Göttingen

Social media research using Reddit as a data source has greatly increased in recent years. Researchers have used Reddit to study a wide variety of issues such as political polarization, depression, astroturfing, and market manipulation to name a few.

This is primarily made possible by the Pushshift project, which offers an almost-complete dataset of Reddit. Such a degree of completeness is unique among major social media platforms, and bypasses sampling issues that may otherwise make large-scale analysis challenging.

However, a considerable fraction of Reddit research uses data which is now already a few years old. At the same time Reddit has been steadily growing, both in terms of content and userbase. For example: half of all threads and comments ever created date back to the last 2 years, despite Reddit being more than 15 years old. In addition, the global COVID-19 pandemic is known to have affected users' social media consumption.

Here we present an updated overview of Reddit as seen through the Pushshift dataset, using data up to August 2022. First we discuss the evolution over time of various statistical observables from a large-scale perspective. Next, we study the life cycle of subreddits, users, and submissions. Finally, we study the response of individual subreddits to external events.