Reddit CrosspostNet—Studying Reddit Communities with Large-Scale Crosspost Graph Networks
As the largest open social medium on the Internet, Reddit is widely studied in the scientific literature. Due to its structured form and division into topical subfora (subreddits), conducted research often concerns connections and interactions between users and/or whole, subreddit-structure-based co...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2023-09-01
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| Series: | Algorithms |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4893/16/9/424 |
| _version_ | 1827727616578158592 |
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| author | Jan Sawicki Maria Ganzha Marcin Paprzycki Yutaka Watanobe |
| author_facet | Jan Sawicki Maria Ganzha Marcin Paprzycki Yutaka Watanobe |
| author_sort | Jan Sawicki |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | As the largest open social medium on the Internet, Reddit is widely studied in the scientific literature. Due to its structured form and division into topical subfora (subreddits), conducted research often concerns connections and interactions between users and/or whole, subreddit-structure-based communities. Overall, the relations between communities are most often studied by applying graph networks, with various creation algorithms. In this work, a novel approach is proposed to build and understand the structure of Reddit. It is based on crossposts—posts that appeared on one subreddit and then were crossposted to another. After capturing one year of crossposts, a directed weighted graph network, using seven million posts from over 10,000 of the most popular subreddits, has been created. Using graph network algorithms, its characteristics are captured and compared to similar studies. We identify the information “sinks” and “sources”—the most active crossposting subreddits. Moreover, we obtained graph network metrics: the degree (modeled with the Power Law), clustering, community detection algorithms, and connected components structure network are compared to previous studies on Reddit network(s), yielding consistent, but also novel results. Finally, the relations between extensively studied subreddits (e.g., r/AITA, r/Parenting, r/politics) and new ones, which were not accounted for in previous research, opening new paths for data-driven studies, are summarized. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-10T23:07:53Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-cd5984a72ffb4011b499cbd077a66f6e |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1999-4893 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-10T23:07:53Z |
| publishDate | 2023-09-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Algorithms |
| spelling | doaj.art-cd5984a72ffb4011b499cbd077a66f6e2023-11-19T09:12:56ZengMDPI AGAlgorithms1999-48932023-09-0116942410.3390/a16090424Reddit CrosspostNet—Studying Reddit Communities with Large-Scale Crosspost Graph NetworksJan Sawicki0Maria Ganzha1Marcin Paprzycki2Yutaka Watanobe3Faculty of Mathematics and Information Science, Warsaw University of Technology, 00-662 Warsaw, PolandFaculty of Mathematics and Information Science, Warsaw University of Technology, 00-662 Warsaw, PolandSystems Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, 01-447 Warsaw, PolandDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering, The University of Aizu, Aizu-Wakamatsu 965-8580, JapanAs the largest open social medium on the Internet, Reddit is widely studied in the scientific literature. Due to its structured form and division into topical subfora (subreddits), conducted research often concerns connections and interactions between users and/or whole, subreddit-structure-based communities. Overall, the relations between communities are most often studied by applying graph networks, with various creation algorithms. In this work, a novel approach is proposed to build and understand the structure of Reddit. It is based on crossposts—posts that appeared on one subreddit and then were crossposted to another. After capturing one year of crossposts, a directed weighted graph network, using seven million posts from over 10,000 of the most popular subreddits, has been created. Using graph network algorithms, its characteristics are captured and compared to similar studies. We identify the information “sinks” and “sources”—the most active crossposting subreddits. Moreover, we obtained graph network metrics: the degree (modeled with the Power Law), clustering, community detection algorithms, and connected components structure network are compared to previous studies on Reddit network(s), yielding consistent, but also novel results. Finally, the relations between extensively studied subreddits (e.g., r/AITA, r/Parenting, r/politics) and new ones, which were not accounted for in previous research, opening new paths for data-driven studies, are summarized.https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4893/16/9/424graph network-based analysisRedditsubredditsonline social networksbig datacrossposts |
| spellingShingle | Jan Sawicki Maria Ganzha Marcin Paprzycki Yutaka Watanobe Reddit CrosspostNet—Studying Reddit Communities with Large-Scale Crosspost Graph Networks Algorithms graph network-based analysis subreddits online social networks big data crossposts |
| title | Reddit CrosspostNet—Studying Reddit Communities with Large-Scale Crosspost Graph Networks |
| title_full | Reddit CrosspostNet—Studying Reddit Communities with Large-Scale Crosspost Graph Networks |
| title_fullStr | Reddit CrosspostNet—Studying Reddit Communities with Large-Scale Crosspost Graph Networks |
| title_full_unstemmed | Reddit CrosspostNet—Studying Reddit Communities with Large-Scale Crosspost Graph Networks |
| title_short | Reddit CrosspostNet—Studying Reddit Communities with Large-Scale Crosspost Graph Networks |
| title_sort | reddit crosspostnet studying reddit communities with large scale crosspost graph networks |
| topic | graph network-based analysis subreddits online social networks big data crossposts |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4893/16/9/424 |
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