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Reddit: affordances as an enabler for shifting loyalties

Reddit: affordances as an enabler for shifting loyalties
Reddit: affordances as an enabler for shifting loyalties
This paper examines the affordances of Reddit, a digital media platform where Users share and discuss content. The aim of the study was to understand the affordances of Reddit, and how the affordances of Reddit through various features of the platform lead to outcomes, specifically those relating to political loyalty and the creation of political narratives. The study contributes an insight into the evolution and understanding of affordances as a result of examining the ways in which individuals who were previously members of another political group constructed narratives around switching their support to the Trump campaign in the 2016 US presidential elections. The study specifically focusses on an exclusive membership community called r/The_Donald. As a result of analysing posts on common themes using Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA), we conclude that the features enable membership of a community to be rewarded, switched or denied. As a result, this study has identified five affordances of Reddit, which include credibility, expressing oneself freely, echoing beliefs, creating membership and the meta-affordance ‘Redpilling’. The outcomes of these affordances are that ingroups are created, support can be switched, extreme or hateful views are legitimised and a new brand of conservatism is given credibility. This in turn is concluded to have realised impacts outside of the virtual environment in this case on the self-reported behaviours of voters.
Affordances, Digital media, Membership, Political, Reddit, Trumpism
1572-9419
723-751
Prakasam, Naveena
f9301fde-f469-41fc-9a80-9dca825a17de
Huxtable-Thomas, Louisa
5ab02194-97c3-4ab6-b1df-a79905d469aa
Prakasam, Naveena
f9301fde-f469-41fc-9a80-9dca825a17de
Huxtable-Thomas, Louisa
5ab02194-97c3-4ab6-b1df-a79905d469aa

Prakasam, Naveena and Huxtable-Thomas, Louisa (2020) Reddit: affordances as an enabler for shifting loyalties. Information Systems Frontiers, 23, 723-751. (doi:10.1007/s10796-020-10002-x).

Record type: Article

Abstract

This paper examines the affordances of Reddit, a digital media platform where Users share and discuss content. The aim of the study was to understand the affordances of Reddit, and how the affordances of Reddit through various features of the platform lead to outcomes, specifically those relating to political loyalty and the creation of political narratives. The study contributes an insight into the evolution and understanding of affordances as a result of examining the ways in which individuals who were previously members of another political group constructed narratives around switching their support to the Trump campaign in the 2016 US presidential elections. The study specifically focusses on an exclusive membership community called r/The_Donald. As a result of analysing posts on common themes using Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA), we conclude that the features enable membership of a community to be rewarded, switched or denied. As a result, this study has identified five affordances of Reddit, which include credibility, expressing oneself freely, echoing beliefs, creating membership and the meta-affordance ‘Redpilling’. The outcomes of these affordances are that ingroups are created, support can be switched, extreme or hateful views are legitimised and a new brand of conservatism is given credibility. This in turn is concluded to have realised impacts outside of the virtual environment in this case on the self-reported behaviours of voters.

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Accepted/In Press date: 2020
e-pub ahead of print date: 26 March 2020
Keywords: Affordances, Digital media, Membership, Political, Reddit, Trumpism

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 443824
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/443824
ISSN: 1572-9419
PURE UUID: 64e1dfd8-ad4a-48f5-93f7-d85130e8a0b6
ORCID for Naveena Prakasam: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-8903-5338

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Date deposited: 14 Sep 2020 16:31
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 04:03

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Author: Louisa Huxtable-Thomas

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