“Rule 14: Men and Women Are Meant To Get Together” An ethnographic exploration of Reddit’s gender-related issue publics Derrek Chundelikatt MA Thesis Universiteit van Amsterdam Programme: Media Studies (Research) Supervisor: dhr. dr. Bernhard Rieder ​ Second reader: mw. Natalia Sánchez-Querubín ​ th Referencing: MLA 8 ​ edition ​ ​ 28 June 2019 Chundelikatt 2 Index Abstract 4 1 Introduction 5 1.1 Reddit and its discontents 7 2 Theory: Of Platforms and Communities 11 3 Methodology 17 3.1 Reddit’s issue publics of gender 17 3.1.1 r/TwoXChromosomes 18 3.1.2 r/MensRights 20 3.1.3 r/MensLib 22 3.1.4 r/TheRedPill 23 3.2 Approach 27 3.3 Data 31 3.3.1 Dataset 1: Comprehensive 33 3.3.2 Dataset 2: Manual 33 3.3.3 Dataset 3: Subreddit homepages and archives 34 3.4 Methods 35 3.4.1 Extracting Significant Words 35 3.4.2 Tracing Concepts Across Subreddits 36 3.4.3 Contextualising discourse with word trees 36 3.4.4 Subreddit Referrals 37 3.4.5 Subreddit Similarity 38 3.4.6 Close reading of subreddit homepages 39 4 Data Ethnography of Subreddits 42 4.1 Rules 42 4.2 Significant terms 49 4.2.1 Overall 49 4.2.2 Significant terms over time 51 4.2.3 Significant terms across subreddits 55 4.3 Explicating Organisational Ecologies 61 4.3.1 Subreddit similarity and homepage outlinks 61 4.3.2 Subreddit Referrals 65 4.4 Contextualised Discourse 72 Chundelikatt 3 5 Conclusions 89 Works Cited 91 Appendix 98 Chundelikatt 4 Abstract This research is concerned with ethnographically exploring gender-related issue publics within Reddit, one of the world’s largest social media platforms. Having grown significantly since its inception in 2005, diverse communities have emerged and burgeoned within Reddit. As a result, the space not only offers a diversity of opinion, but also functions as the battleground for the clash of oppositional views. Constructing gender–a hotly debated topic both online and within the field of policy–as a social “controversy” worth examining; this research undertakes the study of four issue publics that form around it––namely r/TwoXChromosomes, r/MensLib, r/MensRights and r/TheRedPill. Facilitating this study is a unique methodological approach, which combines techniques of controversy analysis, literary analysis, ethnographic analysis, and issue mapping with digital methods in order to extract rich textual data from the examined communities and glean informative insights from the accumulated data. Situating these communities within ‘organisational ecologies’, more simply understood as networked clusters within the platform, this paper unveils the relations between these subreddits and the platform as a whole. Additionally, it tracks the vernacular practices distinct to these communities to outline the manner in which they uniquely reappropriate Reddit’s affordances. Keywords: Reddit, issue publics, gender, controversy analysis, digital methods ​ Chundelikatt 5 1 Introduction My first encounter with Reddit occurred during my search for a suitable forum to discuss current affairs in the world of football and my affection for Manchester United––the club I supported growing up. The self-styled “front page of the internet” offered a host of communities that met these criteria, while simultaneously offering a “live evolving snapshot of the most popular content from across the web” (Cenci, “Why scientists should”). Having spent countless hours within Reddit communities such as ‘r/soccer’ and ‘r/reddevils’, my gaze turned to the other communities that populated this space which seemingly “crystallises the unnavigable cosmos of information (and misinformation) that is the web into self-organising and moderating special interest communities” (Cenci, “Why scientists”). Despite its immense popularity as a unique space where original user-generated content takes precedence, it is an inexplicably underexplored territory within new media scholarship. Massanari’s book from 2015 offered a nuanced and fascinating glimpse into Reddit for both the uninitiated and veterans of the site. As she claimed, however, it remains embedded within a particular frame of time––from 2011 to 2014 (Massanari 1). For a dynamic and transient space like Reddit, such glimpses are informative yet not in the least exhaustive. Although it has retained its fundamental ethos, Reddit has undergone extensive change since the publishing of Massanari’s work. Aesthetically, its interface was redesigned in early 2018 to endow it with the sleekness of its contemporaries. Functionally, its front page sorting options have been diversified and the practice of “defaulting” 1 certain communities was discarded in favour of a more democratic system of front page curation. Exploring the space’s transformation over time in the sections to come, this research posits that Reddit’s ever-evolving character necessitates further investigation in a contemporary setting. This research therefore aims to build on Massanari’s aforementioned foundational work, exploring subcultural formation and participation in the process of doing the same. By positioning Reddit as a platform that functions as an ecosystem with its distinct affordances and 1 Description for the practice of defaulting is provided in section 1.1 ​ Chundelikatt 6 inherent politics, I aim to utilise a unique methodological approach to ethnographically navigate the manner in which “issue publics” concerned with gender organise and operate within the space. To do so, I select four gender-related Reddit communities–namely r/TwoXChromosomes, r/MensLib, r/MensRights, and r/TheRedPill as case studies. These case studies will offer valuable insights into the manner in which these communities’ positions within the gender discourse are reflected in their culture. The communities will also offer insights into the worldview engendered through the rules, moderation policies, posts, comments, etc. within the spaces. The forthcoming section of this research will detail the relevant aspects of the platform in order to acquaint uninitiated readers with its quirks. This will then set up chapter two, which will highlight the theoretical framework that this research operates under; combining literature on platforms, controversies/issues, and public debate to formalise the foundational tenets driving the exploration of the communities studied. The third chapter will tackle the research methodology––wherein the communities being examined will first be ideologically and historically situated in order to contextualise the eventual inferences gleaned from their study. Following this contextualisation, the approach to the study of these communities will be outlined. This approach utilises literature on ethnographic examination, controversy analysis, and digital methods to ground the methodological framework of this research. The latter part of the methodology will elucidate the process of constructing representative datasets and the exploratory digital methods that will be utilised to facilitate a comprehensive study of the sampled communities. Following that, the fourth chapter will outline and discuss that findings from the case studies, which utilise the aforementioned methodology in the pursuance of meeting underlying research goals. To conclude, I will summarize my general inferences and outline directions for future research. Chundelikatt 7 1.1 Reddit and its discontents Inspired by link-aggregating websites like del.icio.us and Digg, Reddit was launched as a space that enabled the sharing of “original and reposted content from around the web” (Massanari 2). Del.icio.us’ ‘Popular’ page, which contained its most bookmarked links, influenced Reddit founders Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman to refine the notion of an authentic ‘front page’, having grown frustrated of “sifting through noise” (Fiegerman, “Aliens in the Valley”) on technology and social bookmarking websites (Fiegerman). By introducing the ‘comment’ feature on posts and making their code base open source in order to facilitate the creation of new ‘subreddits’ by users (also called ‘redditors’), Reddit continued to innovate and empower their user-base over the years, while their direct competitors staggered and fell behind. Consequently, Reddit stands among the 25 most popular websites globally and serves as a fascinating example of a space fundamentally sustained by user-generated content and interaction. More importantly, its daily page views and time spent per visitor is greater than most of its precursors on the list––including giants like Facebook and Instagram (Alexa, “The top 500 sites on the web”). With user-empowerment as a chief factor of Reddit’s contemporary popularity, an exploration of the design choices that facilitate the sustenance of this user-directed system is warranted. The creation of ‘subreddits’ is one such exemplary design choice. A subreddit (also called “sub”) is typically a Reddit forum dedicated to a specific topic, and is referred to on the website using the prefix ‘r/’. For example, the subreddit for the discussion of global news stories is r/worldnews. Data from 2018 (Reddit Metrics) indicated that over 1.2 million subreddits populate the site, where registered users not only post news content (r/news, r/worldnews), but also original/remixed content, such as memes (r/dankmemes, r/wholesomememes, etc.), cute pictures of animals (r/aww, r/eyebleach, etc.), solicitations for advice or information (r/askscience, r/AskReddit, etc.), or niche interests (r/DnD, r/hiphopheads, etc.) (Massanari, 3). In order to ensure that the content and discourse within a subreddit complies