Cross-Subreddit Behavior as Open-Source Indicators of Coordinated Influence: A Case Study of r/Sino & r/China

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis combining linguistic and behavioral signals to identify coordinated influence activities among users participating in two ideologically divergent Reddit communities focused on Chinese politics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel methodology integrating topic modeling, sentiment analysis, and behavioral profiling to detect inauthentic or strategic participation in online influence campaigns.

Findings

Behavioral anomalies correlate with coordinated influence patterns

Content and activity signals effectively identify inauthentic participation

Structural network analysis reveals overlaps in influence strategies

Abstract

This study investigates potential indicators of coordinated influence activity among users participating in both r/Sino and r/China, two ideologically divergent Reddit communities focused on Chinese political discourse. Topic modeling and sentiment analysis are applied to all posts and comments authored by dual-subreddit users to construct a user-topic sentiment matrix. Individual sentiment patterns are compared to global topic baselines derived from the broader r/Sino and r/China populations. Behavioral profiling is performed using full user activity histories and metadata, incorporating measures such as lexical diversity, language consistency, account age, posting frequency, and karma distribution. Users exhibiting multiple behavioral anomalies are identified and examined within a subreddit co-participation network to assess structural overlap. The combined linguistic and behavioral analysis enables the identification of patterns consistent with inauthentic or strategically structured participation. These findings demonstrate the utility of integrating content and activity-based signals in the analysis of online influence behavior within contested information environments.