Giving Gold: Understanding Appreciation in Reddit Communities

In the social media age, our actions are constantly evaluated by other users, many of whom are strangers. While anonymous users are often associated with adversarial behaviors, such as scamming and trolling, they are also capable of positive interactions. Community appreciation, a positive public evaluation of an individual’s content within a community, is found in nearly every social network; Facebook ”likes”, Reddit ”upvotes”, and Twitter ”retweets” for example are all indicators of community appreciation. The goal of this project is to understand what social and linguistic factors contribute to community appreciation behavior, specifically on Reddit, and how these factors differ based on the specific form of appreciation as well as the type of community.