On the Relation Between Opinion Change and Information Consumption on Reddit
Flavio Petruzzellis, Corrado Monti, Gianmarco De Francisci Morales,, Francesco Bonchi

TL;DR
This study explores how self-reported opinion changes on Reddit influence subsequent online community participation, revealing links to propaganda language and enabling prediction of future engagement shifts.
Contribution
It introduces a novel analysis of opinion change effects on online behavior using Reddit's structured self-reporting system, highlighting propaganda's role in community engagement shifts.
Findings
Opinion change correlates with altered community participation.
Propaganda-like language increases likelihood of leaving or joining communities.
A predictive model can identify communities affected by opinion change with moderate accuracy.
Abstract
While much attention has been devoted to the causes of opinion change, little is known about its consequences. Our study sheds a light on the relationship between one user's opinion change episode and subsequent behavioral change on an online social media, Reddit. In particular, we look at r/ChangeMyView, an online community dedicated to debating one's own opinions. Interestingly, this forum adopts a well-codified schema for explicitly self-reporting opinion change. Starting from this ground truth, we analyze changes in future online information consumption behavior that arise after a self-reported opinion change on sociopolitical topics; and in particular, operationalized in this work as the participation to sociopolitical subreddits. Such participation profile is important as it represents one's information diet, and is a reliable proxy for, e.g., political affiliation or health…
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Taxonomy
TopicsOpinion Dynamics and Social Influence · Social Media and Politics · Misinformation and Its Impacts
