Author

Lance Lindner

Date of Award

2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Computer Science

Committee Chair

Tathagata Mukherjee

Committee Member

Jacob Hauenstein

Committee Member

Chaity Banerjee

Subject(s)

Reddit (Firm), Online social networks--Data processing, Internet--Social aspects--Analysis

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the Reddit social network to identify two aspects of interactions on that platform: (1) implicit leader-follower relationships, which are obtained by mining patterns of user interactions on the network and (2) highly “interconnected” subreddits which are obtained by scoring each subreddit using a “interconnectedness” value derived from the interaction patterns of users across subreddits. The data were obtained from Reddit in 2022 using a custom-built scrapper. This work analyzed 125,000 subreddits. The results show that the most highly connected subreddits on the Reddit network are ones that discuss content considered to be “not suitable for work” (NSFW). Moreover, it was found that though these subreddits were highly connected within themselves, they were sparsely connected with other subreddits on the platform. This thesis also found that the implicit leaders in these subreddits drive the majority of the conversations in these groups.

Available for download on Wednesday, December 11, 2024

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