Social Norms on Reddit: A Demographic Analysis
Sara De Candia, Gianmarco De Francisci Morales, Corrado Monti, Francesco Bonchi
Abstract
Social norms, the shared informal rules of acceptable behavior, drive and reflect the evolution of societies. As an increasingly large part of social interactions happens online, social media data offers an unprecedented opportunity to assess the perception of social norm boundaries in-the-wild. In this regard, Reddit’s r/AITA represents an invaluable source of codified social norms. This subreddit is an online forum where individuals describe how they acted in a specific situation in the past, and ask for the feedback of the community about whether their behavior was deviant or socially acceptable. Other users in the community share their views and express a judgment codified by a tag.