Eshwar Chandrasekharan, Mattia Samory, Shagun Jhaver, Hunter Charvat, Amy Bruckman, Cliff Lampe, Jacob Eisenstein, Eric Gilbert
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction11/1/2018·DOI·Read paper
Abstract
<jats:p>Norms are central to how online communities are governed. Yet, norms are also emergent, arise from interaction, and can vary significantly between communities---making them challenging to study at scale. In this paper, we study community norms on Reddit in a large-scale, empirical manner. Via 2.8M comments removed by moderators of 100 top subreddits over 10 months, we use both computational and qualitative methods to identify three types of norms: macro norms that are universal to most parts of Reddit; meso norms that are shared across certain groups of subreddits; and micro norms that are specific to individual, relatively unique subreddits. Given the size of Reddit's user base---and the wide range of topics covered by different subreddits---we argue this represents the first large-scale census of the norms in broader internet culture. In other words, these findings shed light on what Reddit values, and how widely-held those values are. We conclude by discussing implications for the design of new and existing online communities.</jats:p>
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