Understanding Online Discussion Across Difference: Insights from Gun Discourse on Reddit
Rijul Magu, Nivedhitha Mathan Kumar, Yihe Liu, Xander Koo, Diyi Yang,, Amy Bruckman

TL;DR
This study analyzes Reddit discussions on gun policy to understand barriers to cross-ideological engagement and proposes platform design changes to foster more civil and diverse conversations.
Contribution
It combines clustering analysis and user interviews to reveal how Reddit's environment influences siloed discussions and suggests design improvements for cross-difference dialogue.
Findings
Gun discussion groups are divided into three ideological clusters.
Users rarely engage across ideological lines despite willingness.
Reddit's karma system and siloed communities hinder cross-ideological conversations.
Abstract
When discussing difficult topics online, is it common to meaningfully engage with people from diverse perspectives? Why or why not? Could features of the online environment be redesigned to encourage civil conversation across difference? In this paper, we study discussions of gun policy on Reddit, with the overarching goal of developing insights into the potential of the internet to support understanding across difference. We use two methods: a clustering analysis of Reddit posts to contribute insights about what people discuss, and an interview study of twenty Reddit users to help us understand why certain kinds of conversation take place and others don't. We find that the discussion of gun politics falls into three groups: conservative pro-gun, liberal pro-gun, and liberal anti-gun. Each type of group has its own characteristic topics. While our subjects state that they would be…
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Taxonomy
TopicsSocial Media and Politics · Digital Games and Media · Impact of Technology on Adolescents
