Studying Reddit: A Systematic Overview of Disciplines, Approaches, Methods, and Ethics

“Studies such as these suggest that researchers may need to consider the generalizability and representativeness of models built using Reddit data, particularly in the context of ongoing conversations regarding language modeling (see Bender et al., 2021).”

“The Pushshift dataset contains submissions and comments posted on Reddit since June 2005, and has been popular for researchers due to its ease of use and larger querying limits (Baumgartner et al., 2020).”

“Tufekci (2014) once called Twitter the “model organism” for academic study because tweets are considered to be “public,” because Twitter has open APIs which fosters easy data collection, and because Twitter users often respond to world events as they unfold, making it a useful location to gather…”

“For example, personally identifiable information from more than 87 million Facebook users was collected in an academic study, but then the data were used by Cambridge Analytica to micro-target political advertisements (Isaak & Hanna, 2018).”

“Moreover, the smaller the community being studied in any context, the more difficult it is to maintain the anonymity of research subjects (Saunders et al., 2015), even without the additional complication of direct quotes being discoverable by search engines (Bruckman, 2002; Markham, 2012).”

“Due to this, Reddit is also an extraordinarily well-studied platform (Medvedev, Lambiotte, and Delvenne 2019; Proferes et al. 2021; Jamnik and Lane 2017), with extensive research into Reddit behavior (Amaya et al. 2021), user demographics (Tigunova et al. 2020), user motivations (Bogers and…”

“We paraphrased these quotes, which is in line with ethical guidance and recent conventions when using Reddit data which are in place to reduce the risk of reverse identification [60].”

“Reddit users also seem to alter their behaviour when posting on different subreddits [51] While most of the research on Reddit is pan-Reddit [50], there are prior studies of all three subreddits that we examine.”

“While sweat connects to one’s health, body image, and physical experience, it does not fit the more straightforward sensitive categories of information such as drug use, sexual activity, or instances involving a minor or other vulnerable populations (Proferes et al., 2021).”

“The authors of [22] performed a systematic analysis of 727 manuscripts that analyzed Reddit data.”

“This kind of research has not come without ethical challenges, and indeed, as Proferes et al. (2021) note, a number of studies have been criticized for their decisions to share personal information from online forums.”

“These concerns are extensively studied by the research community as reported in e.g., Proferes et al. (2021).”

“…combined, composite, collective, deiden-tified, spun, paraphrased, bundled, amalgamated, illustrative, characteristic, indicative, representative and synthetic, and synthesized (Hemphill et al., 2022; Kasal et al., 2023; Proferes et al., 2021; Reagle, 2022; Winter and Gundur, 2022; Zimmer, 2020).”

“Moreover, a recent review indicates that much of the knowledge about Reddit content is derived from computational textual analysis, and it advocates for further contextualization of this data (Proferes et al., 2021).”

“…interest, with work on Twitter (Ferrara et al., 2016; Mønsted et al., 2017), Face-book/Meta (Chen et al., 2023; Page et al., 2013), Reddit (Proferes et al., 2021), 4chan/8chan (Baele et al., 2021), and earlier political blogs (Adamic and Glance, 2005) presenting important advances in how…”

“We encourage future research to mine these data in ways suggested by Proferes et al. (2021) with the goal of assessing audience reactions to the heroism and antiheroism of Larry David.”

“…research-specific communities (e.g., the r/PhD subreddit alone has more than 240k weekly users and 5k weekly posts), and 2) the platform’s pseudonymity encourages candid disclosure of struggles and skill gaps that would be unlikely to surface in formal publications or institutional surveys [18].”

“Finally, subreddits have their unique norms, cultures, and practices, which means insights from this particular subreddit may not translate across contexts (Proferes et al. 2021).”

“Furthermore, Reddit’s API accessibility and transparent community norms make it a reliable site for large-scale data collection, distinguishing it from platforms with stricter data access or privacy restrictions [58].”

“The findings also may not generalize beyond this community because of Reddit’s demographic differences in participation [3, 60], r/ADHD’s moderation policies, pandemic-related disruptions early in the study period [62], and the exclusion of comments.”

“Reddit’s user base skews younger, male, American, and highly educated [31, 34, 77, 105], meaning our taxonomy likely underrepresents AI harms experienced by older adults, women, non-English speakers, and marginalised communities who may face disproportionate or qualitatively different impacts from…”

“Finally, Reddit’s threaded and conversational structure supports peer learning and collective sensemaking, which makes it a suitable site for an exploratory study of emerging user practices [66, 104].”

“1 Depicting the theoretical framework a larger dataset, both qualitatively and quantitatively, than other platforms like X (for‑ merly Twitter), and its subreddit structure makes it easier to access pertinent study data than Twitter’s [31].”

“Reddit users and communities are not necessarily representative of the broader population, and public social-media data can contain population, self-selection, behavioral, content, and platform-related biases [20, 73, 77].”

“Nevertheless, public availability does not eliminate users’ contextual privacy expectations, particularly in niche fan communities such as those studied here, where discussions are highly specialized and members may not anticipate research use [33,34,69].”

“Fields using publicly available data (e.g. , social media posts) would tend to rarely seek ethics approval [43,73], despite very real ethical questions [29,65].”

“…le finalità di questo studio si basano sulle linee guida definite dall’Association of Internet Researchers (franzke et al., 2020) e la più re-cente letteratura relativa all’uso di dati estratti da social media e piattaforme pubblica-mente accessibili (Proferes et al., 2021; Fiesler et al., 2024).”

“However, the results were limited by sample size [14].”

“Para este trabalho, o Reddit ´e analisado sob a ´otica de um sistema s´ocio-t´ecnico, onde a eficiˆencia na resoluc¸˜ao de problemas depende diretamente da sa´ude das interac¸˜oes entre os membros [Proferes et al. 2021].”

“Future work should first test generalizability across further platforms and language contexts [38].”

“Reddit’s anonymity affordances, including pseudonyms, throwaway accounts, and community-specific forums, reduce some of the social costs of disclosure and create conditions in which users may share experiences they would not voice in identifiable settings (Amaya et al., 2021; Proferes et al., 2021).”

“For example, even though Reddit requires users to be at least 13 years old [100] and some reports suggest it is most popular among males who are 18 to 34 [100], we cannot verify users’ actual ages.”

“The same monument-related event may acquire different problem framings in different subreddits and may generate different response pathways (Ammari et al., 2019; Proferes et al., 2021).”

“Race has a corporeal dimension, and race is read from the body (Omi & Winant, 1994); however, Reddit operates as a predominantly text-based and semi-anony-mous medium (Proferes et al., 2021).”

“…and social-media discourse research, subreddit and community selection were used as a contextual framing strategy (Mur - dock et al. 2024), reflecting the thematic coherence and shared discussion norms commonly observed within online communities (Proferes et al. 2021 ; Prinster et al. 2024).”

“…and was conducted consistent with applicable federal law and CDC policy (see e. Scholars have raised concerns that the use of social media data may be identifiable when publicly reported in research manuscripts; this also applies to Reddit, despite the platform's “pseudoanonymous” nature [48, 53].”

“The social dimension of these environments means that players receive immediate feedback on their chosen identities through interactions with other participants, facilitating learning experiences about how different identities are perceived and treated within communities (Proferes, 2021).”

“The rapid evolution of biotechnology has reshaped public discourse, moving bioethical debates from academic settings to social media platforms such as Reddit 1 (Scheufele and Krause, 2019; Proferes et al., 2021).”

“Consistent with current internet research ethics guidance, formal ethical review was not required for the analysis of these publicly accessible data (59, 60).”

“The site therefore constitutes the public domain for research purposes (Proferes et al., 2021).”

“It is worth mentioning that posts on Reddit and LinkedIn may be shared or reviewed without much scrutiny or regulations for publication [19].”

“Reddit hosts large-scale, spontaneous, and peer-driven discussions, where users share experiences, strategies, and concerns in real time [7].”

“…dalam lebih dari 138.000 komunitas tematik aktif yang disebut subreddit , di mana konten dan komentar pengguna memiliki fitur voting guna untuk menentukan visibilitas, serta memberikan tingkat anonimitas yang tinggi karena partisipasi bersifat pseudonim tanpa verifikasi identitas nyata [9].”

“28 While Reddit has a few overarching rules about content, subreddits vary considerably regarding what they allow and in their specific cultures and norms.”

“Furthermore, its community-based structure facilitates the aggregation of topic-focused discussions [4].”

“Reddit provides a practical setting for studying this problem (Amaya et al., 2021; Proferes et al., 2021).”

“Secondly, data involving minors introduces risks such as unintended re-identification, exposure of sensitive content [91], and potential misuse if harmful interaction patterns are reproduced without safeguards.”

“A recent systematic analysis by Proferes et al. (2021) indicates the number of publications relying on Reddit data has increased every year since 2012.”

“Reddit has emerged as a leading social platform online, boasting 52 million users engaging daily in 2020 and more than 138,000 active thematic communities referred to as "subreddits" [19].”

“Although atypical, scholarly discussion of this form of data collection has increased over the last decade, with research showing it to be an inexpensive and reliable source of data (Amaya et al., 2021; Jamnik & Lane, 2017; Proferes et al., 2021).”

“Local community norms shape what is acceptable, which has led scholars to critique the platform for hosting toxic technocul-tures where hostile political discourse can coexist alongside progressive and feminist communities (Massanari, 2015; Proferes et al., 2021).”