Upvotes? Downvotes? No Votes? Understanding the relationship between reaction mechanisms and political discourse on Reddit

TL;DR

This study analyzes how Reddit's reaction mechanisms influence political discourse, finding that voting schemes affect the deliberative, civic, or demagogic nature of discussions, with no reactions correlating with more demagogic discourse.

Contribution

It provides an in-depth analysis linking social media interface design to the quality of political discussions, using a large dataset and combining qualitative and quantitative methods.

Findings

Discussions with upvotes or both up- and downvotes are more deliberative and civic.

No reaction mechanisms are associated with more demagogic discussions.

Political discourse theories align well with Reddit discussions.

Abstract

A significant share of political discourse occurs online on social media platforms. Policymakers and researchers try to understand the role of social media design in shaping the quality of political discourse around the globe. In the past decades, scholarship on political discourse theory has produced distinct characteristics of different types of prominent political rhetoric such as deliberative, civic, or demagogic discourse. This study investigates the relationship between social media reaction mechanisms (i.e., upvotes, downvotes) and political rhetoric in user discussions by engaging in an in-depth conceptual analysis of political discourse theory. First, we analyze 155 million user comments in 55 political subforums on Reddit between 2010 and 2018 to explore whether users' style of political discussion aligns with the essential components of deliberative, civic, and demagogic discourse. Second, we perform a quantitative study that combines confirmatory factor analysis with difference in differences models to explore whether different reaction mechanism schemes (e.g., upvotes only, upvotes and downvotes, no reaction mechanisms) correspond with political user discussion that is more or less characteristic of deliberative, civic, or demagogic discourse. We produce three main takeaways. First, despite being "ideal constructs of political rhetoric," we find that political discourse theories describe political discussions on Reddit to a large extent. Second, we find that discussions in subforums with only upvotes, or both up- and downvotes are associated with user discourse that is more deliberate and civic. Third, social media discussions are most demagogic in subreddits with no reaction mechanisms at all. These findings offer valuable contributions for ongoing policy discussions on the relationship between social media interface design and respectful political discussion among users.