Age and Gender in Reddit Commenting and Success
Open accessAbstract
Reddit is a large user generated content (USG) website in which users form common interest groups and submit links to external content or text posts of user-created content. The web site operates on a voting system whereby registered users can assign positive or negative ratings to both submitted content and comments made to submitted content. While Reddit is a pseudonymous site, with users creating usernames but providing no biographical data, an informal survey posted to a large shared interest community yielded 734 responses including age and gender of users. This provided a large amount of contextual biographical data with which to analyse user profiles at the first level of Computer Mediated Discourse Analysis (CMDA), articulated by Susan Herring. The results indicate that older Reddit users both formulate more complex writing and enjoy more success when rated by other users. Gender data was incomplete and as such only tentative results could be proposed in that regard.
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Reddit users are more likely to be young males.
“Reddit users are more likely to be young males44”
From No echo in the chambers of political interactions on Reddit (2021) · cites this paper as [45]
The Results section describes the average surveyed r/atheism user as a male in his late teens to mid-20s. The Methodology section says the data came from an informal survey in that subreddit, so the finding does not establish the demographics of Reddit users generally. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredReddit users are not representative of the US population and have strong socio-demographic biases.
“Reddit users are not representative of the US population, and instead have strong socio-demographic biases.”
From No echo in the chambers of political interactions on Reddit (2021) · cites this paper as [45]
The Results (§5) describe the surveyed r/atheism respondents as predominantly young and male, supporting a demographic skew in that group. But the survey was confined to one subreddit (§4), and the paper does not compare its respondents with the US population or establish that the findings apply to Reddit users generally. (LLM, conf=0.87)
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Cites
Adolescent Internet use: What we expect, what teens report
Gross, E. F. (2004) · Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2004.09.005 · Cited by 866 · see citing works
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No echo in the chambers of political interactions on Reddit
De Francisci Morales, G., Monti, C., & Starnini, M. (2021) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/s41598-021-81531-x · Cited by 98 · see citing works
- Authors
- Finlay, S. C.
- Affiliations
- Indiana University South Bend (US)
- Corresponding author
- Finlay, S. Craig
- ORCID
- Finlay, S. Craig
- Venue
- Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
- Published
- 2014-09-30
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 18-28
- ISSN
- 2287-4577 (ISSN-L)
- 2287-9099
- OpenAlex
- W2011481137
- Cited by
- 24
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 0.65
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- IUScholarWorks (Indiana University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Digital Communication and Language
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Expert finding and Q&A systems
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Authorship Attribution and Profiling
- Keywords
- Reddit, user-generated content, age differences, gender differences, commenting behavior, user ratings, electoral systems, user profiles, biographical information, online communities, writing complexity, pseudonymity
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