This thesis examines the ways in which Reddit, a social news aggregator, functions as a tool that allows users to give and receive support and information during times of crisis. By exploring how Reddit was used in the aftermath of the Aurora shootings of July 2012 and the Boston bombings of April 2013, this thesis argues that Reddit has the potential to be a powerful and useful tool in times of crisis.

Agency is a foundational and ongoing concern for the field of Rhetoric and Composition. Long thought to be a product and possession of human action, rhetorical agency represents the most obvious connection between the educational and theoretical work of the field and the civic project of liberal arts and humanities education. Existing theories of anthropocentric rhetorical agency are insufficient, however, to account for the complex technological work of digitally enmeshed networks of humans and nonhumans. To better account for these complex networks, this project argues for the introduction of new materialist theories of distributed agency into conversations about agency within Rhetoric. Such theories eschew the distinction between rhetorical and material agency and instead offer a way of accounting for action and change that makes room for rhetorical and material interventions as well as human and nonhuman participants. I take as my site the social media aftermath of the 2013 bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The digital networks of human users and nonhuman spaces (especially Twitter and Reddit) produced specific tangible effects: #BostonHelp helped stranded runners and tourists find food, shelter, and ways of communicating with family and friends, and Reddit’s /r/findbostonbombers forum enabled and fueled hurtful speculation about an innocent missing student. The strength, impact, and endurance of these networks leads me to three important conclusions: rhetorical/material agency must be distributed across a network of human and nonhuman participants; human intention no longer functions as an appropriate measure of the success or failure of rhetorical/material agency; and responsibility – like agency – must be distributed across networks’ human and nonhuman members.

Reddit (www.reddit.com) is a social news platform for information sharing and exchanging. The amount of data, in terms of both observations and dimensions is enormous because a large number of users express all aspects of knowledge in their own lives by publishing the comments. While it’s easy for a human being to understand the Reddit comments on an individual basis, it is a tremendous challenge to use a computer and extract insights from it. In this thesis, we seek one algorithmic driven approach to analyze both the unique Reddit data structure and the relations inside owners of comments by their similar features. We explore the various types of communications between two people with common characteristics and build a special communication model that characterizes the potential relationship between two users via their communication messages. We then seek a dimensionality reduction methodology that can merge users with similar behavior into same groups. Along the process, we develop computer program to collect data, define attributes based on the communication model and apply a rule-based group merging algorithm. We then evaluate the results to show the effectiveness of this methodology. Our results show reasonable success in producing user groups that have recognizable group characteristics and share similar intentions.

Optimists used to suggest that the anonymity of the internet allows people to interact without prejudices about race, sex, or age. Although some websites still foster anonymous communication, their popularity pales in comparison with sites like Facebook that foreground identifying characteristics. These social network sites claim to enrich their users’ lives by cultivating connections, but they sometimes have the opposite effect. Given the widespread and growing use of social media, my research poses the following questions: Does a particular form of (dis)engagement with the world flow from the reduction of the person to a profile? Does this (dis)engagement extend beyond social media, possibly into the way that we understand the world as such? What can we conclude about the broader theoretical framework in which an analysis of social media might be couched? I answer these questions through Martin Heidegger’s work, which provides the theoretical orientation for the dissertation as a whole. Noting that history informs the way that he understands ontology (Chapter One), I argue that the social changes that are accompanying the spread of the internet suggest modifications to his characterizations of boredom (Chapter Two) and technology (Chapter Three). I then turn to three emblematic social media sites – Facebook, which renders its users connected and identifiable (Chapter Four); Reddit, which gathers its users into a pseudonymous community of common interest (Chapter Five); and 4chan, which demands that its users engage in an anonymous fashion (Chapter Six) – and analyze them using the framework developed above while drawing from them to alter that framework further. I claim that although the patterns of use apparent on these sites differ, they all express different aspects of the mood that holds sway over the internet. Social media is both the cause of, and solution to, boredom, and it is shaping a generalized mood that is coming to seem ontological in its purchase. / Graduate

Corporations attempting to enter the realm of memetic media often find themselves lost and embarrassed; the chaotic nature of meme culture as a global way of expression on the internet has proven difficult, and communities like Reddits r/FellowKids enact vernacular criticism on corporations who attempt to use memes in order to reach their target audience. This study aims to reach higher knowledge of successful corporate engagement in memetic media through a text analysis of discussions between users on Reddit and the interplay on Twitter where users engage in vernacular ways with the Wendy’s Twitter account. Drawing on branding theory and Goffman’s dramaturgical model, the study draws conclusions on how users of a vernacular community engages the Wendy’s Twitter account in different ways. It shows how an authentic identity is ascribed to the corporation through vernacular means, and how the prevalence of vernacular play forces the corporation to surrender message control in order to gain authenticity. It further suggests that an authentic corporate identity in vernacular communities requires the corporation not to act like one; preferring fast, playful communication rather than slow, institutional responses. Implying that the correct plan of action is not to have one, the study further understands the paradox of crafting a marketing strategy not based on controlled communication, and suggests further research into vernacular communities and citizen creative control in memetic media.

In this study I use critical discourse analysis on two different social platforms, Reddit and Battlefields own social platform, where I look for discourses around gamers and masculinity. I use the R.W Connells theories around hegemonic masculinity and E.K Sedgwicks theories around Homosociality to read my material. What I found was that even though a lot of research has found that it is quite balanced between the sexes who uses digital games, the social picture is still that it is something that men use and take part of, and part of why people still look at gamers as men is because a lot of women don’t feel welcomed in the community.

Problemformulering och syfte Inom traditionella medier förekommer i regel alltid en eller flera redaktörer. Dessa fungerarsom gatekeepers över vad som ska lyftas fram i medierna och bli till nyheter. I samband medde sociala mediernas intåg så har sättet vi konsumerar medier på förändrats, och medieflödendär användarna både fungerar som redaktörer och konsumenter har blivit allt vanligare.Den mediala strukturen av Reddit gör att framgångsrikt innehåll spontant uppstår genomuppröstningsprocesser genom användarnas kollektiva medvetandet. Detta görs utan någradirekta ingripande från bestämmande redaktörer.Denna studie har undersökt vad som karaktäriserar de mest framgångsrika inläggen i detredaktörslösa mediet r/sweden, och vilka framgångsfaktorer vi kan identifiera för dem. Metod och material Kvantitativ innehållsanalys av de 100 mest uppröstade inläggen på r/sweden under underfyraveckorsperioden 31 mars - 1 maj 2020. Huvudresultat Toppinläggen var ofta relevanta för samtiden , berättades ofta genom humor, hade mångagånger en personlig inramning och ett sanningsanspråk. Flödets innehåll var ofta fragment avinnehåll från andra plattformar. Interaktionen i kommentarsfälten baserades i regel på humor.En tydlig majoritet av toppinläggen var bilder med humoristiska anspråk.

Sexual assault is a pandemic issue that affects millions worldwide. In the U.S. it is estimated that one in five women and one in 38 men will be victims of rape or attempted rape at some point in their lifetime (Smith et al., 2018). Sexual assault has several significant long-term effects, including negatively impacting survivors’ psychological, emotional, physical, and interpersonal well-being. After a trauma from sexual victimization, survivors face the difficult process of making sense out of what happened, what to do about it, and whether to disclose the experience to others. Reporting, whether formally or informally, can be extremely difficult for survivors, and may even deepen the pain of the experience depending on the response to such a disclosure. However, studies indicate that help-seeking and disclosure are beneficial for the physical and emotional health of the survivor. In this era of social media, many survivors turn to supportive online communities to disclose and/or seek help following their sexual trauma. This study focused on online discussions of sexual violence as shared on reddit, a social media website centered on member discussion and content sharing. The purpose of this study was to examine subreddit forums on rape and sexual assault to identify what issues were shared and what questions were asked by sexual assault survivors following their victimization. Specifically, the research questions included, 1) What types of issues are survivors choosing to share online after assault? And 2) What questions do they ask, and support do they seek from the online community after an assault? Around 300 posts on rape and sexual assault subreddits were analyzed using constructivist grounded theory methodology (Charmaz, 2014). Results suggest that reddit users posted to determine whether their experiences were abusive, to seek help, and to share their stories and seek a supportive witness from the online community.

This thesis examines how 'othering' discourse can be used to construct and negotiate boundaries and shape collective identities within online spaces. Through a mixed-method approach of thematic analysis and a netnographic study, and by drawing on theoretical concepts of online othering and identity formation, this thesis explores how the Gamergate community r/KotakuInAction can be understood in relation to Gamergate, the Alt-Right and society at large. The results show that the community perceive and construct the SJW as a common adversary – a monstrous representation of feminism, progressiveness and political correctness. The analysis also revealed how racist rhetorics and white male anxieties characterize the communitys' othering discourse. Through an in-depth study of user-submitted comment, this thesis argues that r/KotakuInAction's collective identity is fluid and reactionary in nature, characterized by a discourse that is indicative of Alt-Right ideology and white male supremacy. Future research should further explore the network of communities that r/KotakuInAction is part of, as well as examine how the community transform over time.

This thesis was aimed to evaluate if sentiment related to stocks expressed on the subforum “Wallstreetbets” also reflects the traded volume in the stock market. For this purpose, a collection of comment data from posts filtered under the “Hot” section was issued between the 6th of April 2021 and the 20th of April 2021 on daily basis at 22.00 (GMT+2). The comments were preprocessed to filter out noise, and thereafter comments that contained mentions of stocks were analyzed using VADER, an algorithm for grading sentiment. In total sentiment regarding 13 different stocks were fitted into a mixed effect model with random slopes and intercepts. The results showed a positive correlation between sentiment expressed and the traded volume. This indicates that by studying the forum we can better understand how people invested in stocks make investment decisions, which potentially could lead to a competitive advantage over time.