Subreddit Links Drive Community Creation and User Engagement on Reddit
Appeared In: Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
Publication Date: May 31, 2022
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, Krohn and Weninger 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, the authors 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. Krohn and Weninger 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.
Krohn, R., & Weninger, T. (2022). Subreddit Links Drive Community Creation and User Engagement on Reddit. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 16(1), 536-547. Retrieved from https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/19313