How 'Social' are Social News Sites? Exploring the Motivations for Using Reddit.com

Social news sites allow their users to submit and vote on online news stories, thereby bypassing the authority and power of traditional newspaper editors. In this paper we explore what motivates users of social news sites, such as Reddit, to participate in this collaborative editorial process. We present a tiered framework of motivational factors for participating on social news sites, based on a comprehensive literature review, drawn from fields like social media research, sociology, (social) psychology, and behavioral economics. We then validate this framework through a survey deployed on Reddit and use the results of this survey to focus the motivational framework for the social news domain. the recreational value of the information posted to Reddit, along with the powerful possibilities for customization appear to be the most powerful incentives for using Reddit. Perhaps surprisingly, the social aspect of social news sites is not a motivating factor for the majority of Reddit users. Influencing the placement and reception of news stories in their niche communities of interest is what draws people to sites such as Reddit.

[1]  Alexander Halavais,et al.  DO DUGG DIGGERS DIGG DILIGENTLY? , 2009 .

[2]  Mikael Jakobsson,et al.  The Achievement Machine: Understanding Xbox 360 Achievements in Gaming Practices , 2011, Game Stud..

[3]  Donna L. Hoffman,et al.  A New Marketing Paradigm for Electronic Commerce , 1997, Inf. Soc..

[4]  A. Maslow.  Motivation and Personality , 1954 .

[5]  Friedrich-Schiller-Universitat Jena.  Common Bond and Common Identity Groups on the Internet: Attachment and Normative Behavior in On-Topic and Off-Topic Chats , 2002 .

[6]  Joseph Lampel,et al.  The Role of Status-Seeking in Online Communities: Giving the Gift of Experience , 2007, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[7]  Kristina Lerman.  User Participation in Social Media: Digg Study , 2007, 2007 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conferences on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology - Workshops.

[8]  Oded Nov,et al.  What motivates Wikipedians? , 2007, CACM.

[9]  Pascal Borry,et al.  Users’ motivations to purchase direct-to-consumer genome-wide testing: an exploratory study of personal stories , 2011, Journal of Community Genetics.

[10]  Robert E. Kraut,et al.  A Simulation for Designing Online Community : Member Motivation , Contribution , and Discussion Moderation , 2008 .

[11]  R P Lederman,et al.  Systematic Data Collection: I , 1994, MCN. The American journal of maternal child nursing.

[12]  Robert E. Kraut,et al.  Predicting Continued Participation in Newsgroups , 2006, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[13]  David Gefen,et al.  Some antecedents and effects of trust in virtual communities , 2002, J. Strateg. Inf. Syst..

[14]  Jennifer Preece,et al.  Lurker demographics: counting the silent , 2000, CHI.

[15]  E. Sadlon,et al.  The Ecology of Digg : Niches and Reciprocity in a Social Network Landscape , 2009 .

[16]  S. Milgram,et al.  Note on the drawing power of crowds of different size. , 1969 .

[17]  David Gefen,et al.  Virtual Community Attraction: Why People Hang Out Online , 2006, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[18]  D. R. Danielson,et al.  How do users evaluate the credibility of Web sites?: a study with over 2,500 participants , 2003, DUX '03.

[19]  Petter Bae Brandtzæg,et al.  User loyalty and online communities: why members of online communities are not faithful , 2008, INTETAIN '08.

[20]  Kristina Lerman,et al.  Social Contagion: An Empirical Study of Information Spread on Digg and Twitter Follower Graphs , 2012, ArXiv.

[21]  Carolyn Penstein Rosé,et al.  Talk to me: foundations for successful individual-group interactions in online communities , 2006, CHI.

[22]  Aaron Smith,et al.  6% of online adults are reddit users , 2013 .

[23]  Rupert Brown,et al.  Social Identities: Motivational, Emotional, Cultural Influences , 2008 .

[24]  Bruno S. Silvestre,et al.  Social Media? Get Serious! Understanding the Functional Building Blocks of Social Media , 2011 .

[25]  G. Marwell,et al.  THE PARADOX OF GROUP SIZE IN COLLECTIVE ACTION: A THEORY OF THE CRITICAL MASS. II. * , 1988 .

[26]  Petter Bae Brandtzæg,et al.  Why People Use Social Networking Sites , 2009, HCI.

[27]  A. Kaplan,et al.  Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media , 2010 .

[28]  Kristina Lerman,et al.  Analysis of social voting patterns on digg , 2008, WOSN '08.

[29]  Arthur A. Stukas,et al.  PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES Understanding and Assessing the Motivations of Volunteers: A Functional Approach , 2004 .

[30]  S. Rafaeli,et al.  Psychological Aspects of Cyberspace: Online Motivational Factors: Incentives for Participation and Contribution in Wikipedia , 2008 .