Growth and Inequality of Participation in Online Communities: A Longitudinal Analysis

Abstract

The online communities of Reddit provide an ideal testing ground for determining the ways in which growth affect communities. By analyzing comments made on Reddit between 2008 and 2016, we demonstrate that Reddit consists of multiple communities growing at different rates. In several cases, community size is associated with greater inequality of participation in discourse, supporting the notion that members of online communities become less interactive and more passive as communities grow. However, one community, r/TwoXChromosomes, exhibits increasing equality of participation in discourse as it grows.