This document summarizes an analysis of comments on Reddit to understand what drives higher response rates. It first provides background on Reddit and discusses communication theories. Two hypotheses are that more aggressive comments and those focusing on the self ("meforming") will receive more replies. The dataset is Reddit comments from May 2015. Analysis of sentiment and focus finds assertive, informing comments receive the most replies, while aggressive comments get the most upvotes. The hypotheses are rejected as sarcasm and meforming get lower responses. It concludes users are more likely to reply to assertive, informing comments on Reddit.

1. A Look
Into Reddit’s
Star Dish
Sindhu Babu
Frances Coronel

2. Table of Contents
1. Background
2. Literature
3. Hypotheses
4. Dataset
5. Analysis
2

3. 1
Background
Human & social
motivation, high-level
research questions
Since the launch of Reddit in June 2005, the site has become the 7th
most visited in the U.S., and its users have posted billions of
comments.
Those comments are filled with abbreviations, internet memes and
slang, much like the rest of the web, and collectively they form a
trove of data about how people use language online.
3
To Note
As of the end of 2015, the site’s visitors were mostly 35 or younger,
and about 80 percent male according to Google Adwords.

4. 2
Literature
The connective media
theories associated
with this data analysis
Some of the topics covered...
▪ Emotional Contagion
▪ Group Polarization
▪ Meforming versus Informing
4

5. The capacity
to spread
emotions
quickly
throughout
the online
world
5
Emotional Contagion

6. Individuals
tending to
endorse a
more
extreme
position in
the direction
already
favored by
the group
6
Group Polarization

7. Users that
typically post
messages
relating to
themselves or
their thoughts
versus posting
messages that
are informing
in nature
7
Meformers vs
Informers

8. In other words, what components make up
Reddit’s secret dish of comments and what
allows them as a whole to succeed in a
digital world where many platforms fail to
be regulate such discussion systems?
8

9. 3
Hypotheses
High-level research
questions
1. What kind of communication style in
comments drives the highest reply rates?
Passive, assertive, aggressive, or sarcastic
sentiment?
2. What kind of information style drives the
highest reply rates? Meforming or informing?
9

10. There will be
a positive
correlation
between
response rate
and level of
aggression.
10
What kind of sentiment in
comments drives the
highest reply rates?
Passive, assertive,
aggressive, or sarcastic
sentiment?

11. There will be
a positive
correlation
between
response rate
and
meforming.
11
What kind of information
style drives the highest
reply rates? Meforming or
informing?

12. 4
Dataset
Introduce the service &
dataset you looked at
Source: Kaggle
12

13. 30GB
Recently Reddit released an enormous dataset containing all ~1.7 billion of
their publicly available comments. The full dataset is a crazy 1+ terabyte
uncompressed, so Kaggle decided to just share a small portion of the
comments from May 2015 for folks like connective media students to
tinker with (8GB compressed, 30 GB uncompressed).
13

14. 5
Analysis
Describe how you
addressed the
questions with the data
and talk about the
results
▪ Sentiment Analysis
- 4 styles
- Aggressive, Assertive, Passive, Sarcastic
- Identified keywords that are representative of these
communication styles
▪ Meforming versus Informing
- Identified keywords which might denote meforming
- All other comments are identified as informing
14

15. Based off these results,
our hypothesis on the
positive correlation
between aggression
and reply rates is
rejected.
However, it is clear that
there is in fact a
positive correlation
between aggression
and the number of
upvotes.
15
Communication
Style Analysis
Aggressive comments had the highest number of upvotes with a ranking score of 6.45
which is ~11% higher than the second best of assertive comments.
In turn, assertive comments had the highest reply rates with nearly 90,000 comments
which is 200% better (2x) than the next best of aggressive comments.
Sarcasm, in contrast, rarely received high scores.

16. Based off these results,
interestingly enough,
our hypothesis on the
positive correlation
between meforming
and reply rates is
rejected.
Meforming fared much
worse when it came to
reply rates but
surprisingly was
slightly higher when it
came to number of
upvotes.
16
Meforming
versus Informing
Meforming comments had the highest number of upvotes with a ranking
score of 5.68 which is only ~1% higher compared to informing.
Informing comments had the highest reply rates with over 1mill comments
which is a staggering ~500% higher than meforming.

17. 6
Conclusions
Describe how you
addressed the
questions with the data
and talk about the
results
▪ A user on Reddit is more likely to have a
higher reply rate for a comment that is
assertive and informing.
▪ In turn, it can also be concluded that a user on
Reddit is less likely to have a higher reply rate
for a comment that is sarcastic and
meforming.
17

18. Credits
Special thanks to all the people who
made and released these awesome
resources for free.
18
▪ Presentation template by SlidesCarnival
▪ Dataset provided by Kaggle
▪ The brains of Sindhu Babu & Frances Coronel
▪ See our report for academic references