1 research outputs found
Legends: Folklore on Reddit
In this paper we introduce Reddit legends, a collection of venerated old
posts that have become famous on Reddit. To establish the utility of Reddit
legends for both computational science/HCI and folkloristics, we investigate
two main questions: (1) whether they can be considered folklore, i.e. if they
have consistent form, cultural significance, and undergo spontaneous
transmission, and (2) whether they can be studied in a systematic manner.
Through several subtasks, including the creation of a typology, an analysis of
references to Reddit legends, and an examination of some of the textual
characteristics of referencing behaviour, we show that Reddit legends can
indeed be considered as folklore and that they are amendable to systematic
text-based approaches. We discuss how these results will enable future analyses
of folklore on Reddit, including tracking subreddit-wide and individual-user
behaviour, and the relationship of this behaviour to other cultural markers