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Identifying the social signals that drive online discussions: A case study of reddit communities

  • Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

53 Scopus citations

Abstract

Increasingly people form opinions based on information they consume on online social media. As a result, it is crucial to understand what type of content attracts people's attention on social media and drive discussions. In this paper we focus on online discussions. Can we predict which comments and what content gets the highest attention in an online discussion? How does this content differ from community to community? To accomplish this, we undertake a unique study of Reddit involving a large sample comments from 11 popular subreddits with different properties. We introduce a large number of sentiment, relevance, content analysis features including some novel features customized to reddit. Through a comparative analysis of the chosen subreddits, we show that our models are correctly able to retrieve top replies under a post with great precision. In addition, we explain our findings with a detailed analysis of what distinguishes high scoring posts in different communities that differ along the dimensions of the specificity of topic and style, audience and level of moderation.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2017 26th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks, ICCCN 2017
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
ISBN (Electronic)9781509029914
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 14 2017
Event26th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks, ICCCN 2017 - Vancouver, Canada
Duration: Jul 31 2017Aug 3 2017

Publication series

Name2017 26th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks, ICCCN 2017

Conference

Conference26th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks, ICCCN 2017
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityVancouver
Period07/31/1708/3/17

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