This study investigates what characteristics can help identify opinion leaders in a virtual semi-anonymous environment such as Reddit. Nevertheless, as a hub for news and viral material, Reddit remains widely under researched (Ovadia, 2015). Reddit, created in 2005 by Huffman and Ohanian (Kincaid, 2009), was used by six percent of Americans in 2013 (Duggan and Smith, 2013) and had grown to more than 168 million unique users as of March 2015 (Reddit, 2015a). Further, while redditors are discouraged from providing identifying information about themselves, Reddit has a culture of authenticity. For example, users are required to provide usernames, though these are rarely real identities (van der Nagel and Frith, 2015). Reddit is considered a semi-anonymous environment because it requires at least some identifying information. However, social news sites, like Reddit, Digg, and Slashdot, incorporate different configurations and feature users publishing in semi-anonymous platforms. Well-established social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, boast millions of users who identify themselves with profile information that includes their names, photographs, and demographic information. Opinion leaders’ characteristics in online environments, such as Reddit, where users are primarily semi-anonymous. While there is a growing library of research related to opinion leadership in emerging digital platforms, there is limited knowledge about
The most influential individuals among these users are known as opinion leaders. Media consumers can act as citizen journalists - sharing, reframing, interpreting and judging news content through social features like commenting and sharing.
While news organizations have utilized such sites as outlets to distribute news content, users have also played a central role in sharing, reposting, and recirculating media content. Social news and networking sites allow users to manage their news consumption individually and tailor content to their interests. In addition, Reddit’s reputational value karma may help users and researchers identify opinion leaders.Ĭonclusion, limitations, and future studies Results indicate that semi-anonymous opinion leadership may exist, as several users appear frequently as top-voted posters and commenters. Identifiable characteristics, such as commenting, longevity, karma scores, posting frequency, and posting scores were analyzed. Is it possible to identify opinion leaders in a semi-anonymous online network? To answer this question, this study examines the social news site Reddit to determine whether opinion leadership can be recognized in an online network that, at face value, does not allow users to associate with their off-line personas. Led it on Reddit: An exploratory study examining opinion leadership on Reddit
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