Reddit Political Discussion Field Experiment

This repository contains replication materials for the political discussion field experiment, fielded in summer 2024 (see also associated OSF project).

The repository is structured as follows:

Sample descriptives

Basic demographic information and visualization of survey variables Reddit metrics (internal and external)

01-sample-descriptives.Rmd / 01-sample-descriptives.html

RQ1 - Discussion participation

Zero hurdle models to describe predictors of individual discussion participation in two parts (continuous comment counts vs. overcoming the zero hurdle); closes with hudle models for different experimental conditions and baseline balance table

02-RQ1-participation.Rmd / 02-RQ1-participation.html

RQ2 - Treatment effects

Part one: Effects of experimental conditions on participation distributions, effects on discourse metrics (toxicity and comment length) and effects on political attitude deltas between pre and post surveys

03-RQ2-experiment.Rmd / 03-RQ2-experiment.html

Part two: Overtime change. Summary effects of treatments on political variable deltas and pooled overtime analyses - change in political variables (trust, polarization, etc.) issue attitudes and issue knowledge; exploration of individual issue opinion trajectories (as exploration of data granularity)

04-opinion-change.Rmd / 04-opinion-change.html

Network Analyses

Visualization of comment graphs and user interaction networks, analysis of degree distributions by experimental condition, correlation of user toxicity and interaction network centrality

05-networks.Rmd / 05-networks.html

Temporal Models

Analyses of social feedback (examining the effects of up-voting and down-voting on subsequent comment activity) and survival analyses to model discussion dropout.

06-temporal-models.Rmd / 06-temporal-models.html