• Media type: E-Article
  • Title: Subreddit Links Drive Community Creation and User Engagement on Reddit
  • Contributor: Krohn, Rachel; Weninger, Tim
  • Published: Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2022
  • Published in: Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 16 (2022), Seite 536-547
  • Language: Not determined
  • DOI: 10.1609/icwsm.v16i1.19313
  • ISSN: 2334-0770; 2162-3449
  • Origination:
  • Footnote:
  • Description: <jats:p>On Reddit, individual subreddits are used to organize content and connect users. One mode of interaction is the subreddit link, which occurs when a user makes a direct reference to a subreddit in another community. Based on the ubiquity of these references, we have undertaken a study on subreddit links on Reddit, with the goal of understanding their impact on both the referenced subreddit, and on the subreddit landscape as a whole. By way of an extensive observational study along with several natural experiments using the entire history of Reddit, we were able to determine that (1) subreddit links are a significant driver of new subreddit creation; (2) subreddit links (2a) substantially drive activity in the referenced subreddit, and (2b) are frequently created in response to high levels of activity in the referenced subreddit; and (3) the graph of subreddit links has become less dense and more treelike over time. We conclude with a discussion of how these results confirm, add to, and in some cases conflict with existing theories on information-seeking behavior and self-organizing behavior in online social systems.</jats:p>