Reddit and Engaged Science Communication Online: An Examination of Reddit’s R/Science Ask-Me-Anythings and Science Discussion Series

ABSTRACT

Studies of emergent online science communication genres continuously seek to understand novel forms of popularizations aimed at facilitating expert-with-public engagement. To understand how scientists can successfully engage with audiences in dynamic online environments, we examine Reddit’s science subreddit, attending to the acclaimed Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) series, and subsequent Science Discussion Series (SDS). A move analysis on a corpus of AMA and SDS original posts reveal moves used when engaging audiences through these installments.

KEYWORDS:

• Public engagement
• digital rhetoric
• social media
• genre studies
• science communication
• move analysis

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their advice, which improved our manuscript, as well as the research assistants who provided support for test coding. We also acknowledge this work draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Ontario Early Researcher Award Program, and the Canada Research Chairs program.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. With over 25 million members, r/science is the largest established science community on the web (Tracy, 2021).

2. We may also refer to Science Discussion(s) as SD or SDs.

3. What makes Reddit unique is its sorting algorithms that rely on user votes to make content more or less visible within each subreddit, in user’s customized home feeds that serve up popular content from the subreddits they are subscribed to, and on the “front page” (r/popular) of Reddit (the default page on reddit.com for individuals who are not logged in, and a common sorting option for those logged in, as represented by a small shortcut icon in Reddit’s header). Likewise, redditors can upvote and downvote comment contributions by fellow-redditors, which increases and reduces the visibility of commentary.

4. A full description of the rules may be found on the Reddit Science rules webpage (http://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules).

5. According to the head moderator of r/science, Nathan Allen, the cancellation was a result of changes in ranking algorithms and the prohibition of post manipulation by moderators that limited the discoverability of the science AMAs on Reddit. The announcement of the AMA series cancellation was met with dismay and frustration on the part of redditors. Specifically, the AMA cancellation announcement (nallen, 2018) received an incredible response, earning over thirty-seven thousand points on the post and accruing over two thousand three hundred comments discussing the loss of this popular science communication outlet.

6. This method is adapted from the English for Specific Purposes tradition of genre studies with adaptations that allow for the polysemy that the rhetorical tradition so usefully acknowledge. On genre traditions and their development, refer to Hyon (1996); refer also to Genre Across Border (https://genreacrossborders.org/).

7. Data collection for the AMA series took place in May 2017.

8. There are two types of flair on Reddit: link flair (which is applied to posts) and user flair. Link flair is used to organize content within a subreddit, while user flair provides information about the redditor that is relevant to the subreddit; in r/science, it is a user’s area of scientific expertise which generally takes the form of “Level of Education | Field | Specialty or Subfield.”|“Level of Education | Field | Specialty or Subfield.”|“Level of Education | Field | Specialty or Subfield..”

9. AMAs flaired as Medical or Social Sciences – namely, Anthropology, Epidemiology, Cancer, Health, Medicine, Neuroscience, Psychology or Social Science – were excluded from our results to ensure that we focused on the rhetorical strategies deployed by scientists, rather than social scientists or medical researchers/professionals who often have distinct rhetorical strategies.

Additional information

Funding

 The work draws on research supported in part by an Ontario Early Researcher Award, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Canada Research Chairs program.

Notes on contributors

Devon Moriarty

Devon Moriarty is a PhD Candidate in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. Her work examining science communication in online spaces has appeared in journals such as Social Epistemology and Rhetoric Review.

Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher

Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher is a Canada Research Chair in Science, Health, and Technology Communication at the University of Waterloo, author of On Expertise (Penn State UP), Science Communication Online (Ohio State UP), and co-editor of Emerging Genres in New Media Environments (Palgrave).