Understanding and Augmenting Debates on Reddit

Abstract

Due to its low threshold for participation and user-driven nature, Reddit is one of the most popular platforms for democratic debates. Therefore, understanding these large-scale and dynamic deliberations require thoughtful investigations. We interviewed twelve participants to understand the debate culture, their interactions with the Reddit interface, perceived affordances, and design suggestions for improving the debate experience. Our findings revealed some characteristics of Reddit debate culture, including the impact of good and bad faith deliberations, misinformation motivating participation, and anonymity leading to low-stake debate environments. We also found that heated exchanges might lead to harmful behaviors due to the “disinhibited” online environment, and providing clear reasonings for one’s arguments led to critical but civil debates. Users reflected on their encounters with cognitive biases while engaging in debates on Reddit. Based on the findings, we present design implications for enabling civil and constructive debates online, including reducing cognitive load with an adaptive interface, encouraging critical engagement and introspections, empowering the community to moderate content, and introducing signifiers for positive social norms.