Extracting Inter-community Conflicts in Reddit

TL;DR

This paper investigates inter-community conflicts among Reddit subreddits by constructing a conflict network, revealing patterns, co-targeted communities, and temporal shifts in conflict focus, thus providing a broader understanding of social tensions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to analyze conflicts at the community level on Reddit, moving beyond individual-focused studies to uncover network-wide conflict patterns.

Findings

Identified distinct conflict patterns among subreddits

Detected communities of co-targeted subreddits

Observed temporal shifts in conflict focus

Abstract

Anti-social behaviors in social media can happen both at user and community levels. While a great deal of attention is on the individual as an 'aggressor,' the banning of entire Reddit subcommunities (i.e., subreddits) demonstrates that this is a multi-layer concern. Existing research on inter-community conflict has largely focused on specific subcommunities or ideological opponents. However, antagonistic behaviors may be more pervasive and integrate into the broader network. In this work, we study the landscape of conflicts among subreddits by deriving higher-level (community) behaviors from the way individuals are sanctioned and rewarded. By constructing a conflict network, we characterize different patterns in subreddit-to-subreddit conflicts as well as communities of 'co-targeted' subreddits. By analyzing the dynamics of these interactions, we also observe that the conflict focus shifts over time.