Reddit’s Veil of Anonymity: Predictors of engagement and participation in media environments with hostile reputations

Kilgo, Danielle K.; Ng, Yee Man Margaret; Riedl, Martin; Lacasa-Mas, Iván

doi:10.1177/2056305118810216

Cited by 26 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 34 publications

(51 reference statements)

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“…Conversely, anonymous posters were the least likely to receive empathic support, while posters with fewer identifying characteristics received the lowest level of reassuring and highest level of informational support. In other words, differences in support are contingent on identity, a peculiar predictor of supportive engagement, particularly in digital platforms that host cultures of anonymity like Imgur and Reddit (Kilgo et al, 2018). Voluntary disclosure of identifying information seems to have important implications for support provision.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In response to calls for further research evaluating antecedents to support provision and across social media platforms, a content analysis was performed of 117 cancer-related Imgur posts and 2511 corresponding comments, examining the relationship between post features and social support in comments. The Imgur platform falls in a genre of social networks defined by a culture of anonymity (which also includes sites like Reddit and Tumblr ), in which the expectation of semi-anonymity influences engagement and discourse (e.g., Kilgo et al, 2018; Massanari, 2017). Moreover, the voting system utilized by the platform (a bidirectional setup using upvotes and downvotes) allows users to influence how content is displayed in the site (similar to Reddit ).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Posting About Cancer: Predicting Social Support in Imgur Comments

Hale

Collins

Kilgo

2020

Social Media + Society

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People who are affected by cancer can benefit greatly from social support and digital social networks, though our understanding of online support is primarily founded in dominant platforms like Facebook. In addition, while previous scholarship indicates that social support is available online, little research has examined predictors of support provision. A content analysis was performed to examine the relationship between narrative features in Imgur posts and social support in comments. Imgur ( Imgur.com ) is a social media site and image-hosting platform, amassing over 250 million monthly visitors. Six post features were hypothesized to predict support, including explanations of the diagnosis experience, evidence of agentive problem solving, indications of positive reappraisal, pleads for the audience to get a checkup, references to mortality, and inclusion of humor. The results of this study indicate a relationship between narrative construction and social support, finding that the inclusion of narrative features in cancer-related posts influenced the provision of support in comments. Findings of this study could have implications for a multitude of stakeholders interested in social support provision, including healthcare professionals and researchers interested in the use of social media platforms for support, and organizations interested in designing supportive online platforms for individuals coping with cancer.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Posting About Cancer: Predicting Social Support in Imgur Comments

Hale

Collins

Kilgo

2020

Social Media + Society

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“…As a form "in which moderators downplay…or even eliminate…the participatory element of the technique" (Kozinets, 2010, p. 96), discourse and affect analysis of comments posted online fit this description of netnography well. For the questions of gender, identity and transgression that we are interested in here, the 'culture of anonymity' afforded by platforms like YouTube and Reddit (Kilgo, Ng, Riedl, & Lacasa-Mas, 2018), in combination with unrestricted access to posted material for non-participant researchers provide ideal conditions for observational ethnography. Perhaps superfluously, it should be noted that this is but one form of 'netnography.'…”

Section: Netnography: Gender and Legacymentioning

confidence: 99%

Casting for Change: Tracing Gender in Discussions of Casting through Feminist Media Ethnography

Hermes

Kopitz

2021

MaC

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The moment of casting is a crucial one in any media production. Casting the ‘right’ person shapes the narrative as much as the way in which the final product might be received by critics and audiences. For this article, casting—as the moment in which gender is hypervisible in its complex intersectional entanglement with class, race and sexuality—will be our gateway to exploring the dynamics of discussion of gender conventions and how we, as feminist scholars, might manoeuvre. To do so, we will test and triangulate three different forms of ethnographically inspired inquiry: 1) ‘collaborative auto-ethnography,’ to discuss male-to-female gender-bending comedies from the 1980s and 1990s, 2) ‘netnography’ of online discussions about the (potential) recasting of gendered legacy roles from <em>Doctor Who</em> to <em>Mary Poppins</em>, and 3) textual media analysis of content focusing on the casting of cisgender actors for transgender roles. Exploring the affordances and challenges of these three methods underlines the duty of care that is essential to feminist audience research. Moving across personal and anonymous, ‘real’ and ‘virtual,’ popular and professional discussion highlights how gender has been used and continues to be instrumentalised in lived audience experience and in audience research.

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“…Thus, the anonymity and quasi-anonymity afforded by social media produce an “online disinhibition effect” (Suler, 2004) such that men become “undisciplined” (Curlew, 2019) and more inclined to produce misogynist content. Anonymity has become an attractive explanation for the misogynist communities of Reddit in particular (Kilgo, Ng, Riedl, & Lacasa-Mas, 2018).…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“She Thinks of Him as a Machine”: On the Entanglements of Neoliberal Ideology and Misogynist Cybercrime

Valkenburgh

2019

Social Media + Society

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The “manosphere” is a constellation of masculinist social media communities loosely unified by an anti-feminist worldview. Although extant journalism and social media scholarship successfully delineate the manosphere as a significant social problem by associating it with misogynist cybercrime and cyberhate, the resulting narrative simplistically pathologizes manosphere discourse while leaving its misogyny undertheorized. In this article, I complicate this emerging narrative by demonstrating how a certain central manosphere discourse qualitatively overlaps with a broader neoliberal ideology. I do so by further developing a critical discourse analysis of quasi-representative manosphere documents drawn from “The Red Pill,” a sub-forum of Reddit.com. Although this forum is explicitly devoted to discussing heterosexual seduction strategies, I find that it also produces a discursive means for fiscally conservative men to reconcile their pro-capitalist economic beliefs with apparent evidence of capitalism’s destructive tendencies and contradictions. This forum’s anti-feminist discourse implicitly parallels Marxian theory while explicitly supporting free market capitalism and denigrating women, thereby providing men with a linguistic and conceptual framework to scapegoat women for economic problems while leaving neoliberal ideas and assumptions unchallenged.

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Reddit’s Veil of Anonymity: Predictors of engagement and participation in media environments with hostile reputations

Cited by 26 publications

References 34 publications

Posting About Cancer: Predicting Social Support in Imgur Comments

Posting About Cancer: Predicting Social Support in Imgur Comments

Casting for Change: Tracing Gender in Discussions of Casting through Feminist Media Ethnography

“She Thinks of Him as a Machine”: On the Entanglements of Neoliberal Ideology and Misogynist Cybercrime

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