How does the audience affect the way we express our gender roles?

Human beings adapt their language to suit their audience when interacting. While audience effects have been studied in theory and small-scale research, there is a lack of large-scale studies on naturally occurring audience effects. In this study, we examine audience effects in interactions with gendered contexts that emphasize different social identities (e.g. mother, father, and parent) by analyzing interactions on Reddit. We collected posts from three popular parenting subreddits (r/Daddit, r/Mommit, and r/Parenting), which cater to self-identified fathers and mothers (ostensibly single-gender) and parents (explicitly mixed-gender) respectively. By selecting a sample of users who have published on both single-gender and mixed-gender subreddits, we are able to explore both audience and gender effects. To analyze the posts, we used word embeddings and added the user as a token in the corpus. This allowed us to compare user-tokens to word-tokens and measure their similarity. Our results show that mothers and fathers behave similarly and discuss a diverse range of topics in a mixed-gender context, focusing more on advising each other on educational and family matters. In single-gender subreddits, mothers and fathers are more focused on specific topics. Mothers in r/Mommit distinguish themselves from other groups by discussing topics such as medical care, sleep and potty training, and food. Both mothers and fathers celebrate parenting events and describe or comment on the physical appearance of their children in front of a single-gender audience. In conclusion, this study demonstrates how mothers and fathers express different concerns and adapt their behaviour to different group-based audiences. It also highlights the potential of using Reddit and word embeddings to better understand the dynamics of audience and gender in a natural setting

How do Mothers and Fathers talk about parenting to different audiences?

While major strides have been made towards gender equality in public life, serious inequality remains in the domestic sphere, especially around parenting. The present study analyses discussions about parenting on Reddit (i.e., a content aggregation website) to explore audience effects and gender stereotypes. It suggests a novel method to study topical variation in individuals’ language when interacting with different audiences. Comments posted in 2020 were collected from three parenting subreddits (i.e., topical communities), described as being for fathers (r/Daddit), mothers (r/Mommit), and all parents (r/Parenting). Users posting on r/Parenting and r/Daddit or on r/Parenting and r/Mommit were assumed to identify as fathers or mothers, respectively, allowing gender comparison. Users’ comments on r/Parenting (to a mixed-gender audience) were compared with their comments to single-gender audiences on r/Daddit or r/Mommit using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modelling. Results show that the most discussed topic among parents is about education and family advice, a topic mainly discussed in the mixed-gender subreddit and more by fathers than mothers. The topic model also indicates that, when it comes to the basic needs of children (sleep, food, and medical care), mothers seem to be more concerned regardless of the audience. In contrast, topics such as birth and pregnancy announcements and physical appearance are more discussed by fathers in the father-centric subreddit. Overall, findings seem to show that mothers are generally more concerned about the practical sides of parenting while fathers’ expressed concerns are more contextual: with other fathers, there seems to be a desire to show their fatherhood and be recognized for it while they discuss education with mothers. These results demonstrate  that concerns expressed by parents on Reddit are context-sensitive but also consistent with gender stereotypes, potentially reflecting a persistent gendered and unequal division of labour in parenting. </p

Using word embeddings to analyse audience effects and individual differences in parenting subreddits

This paper explores how individuals’ language use in gender-specific groups (“mothers” and “fathers”) compares to their interactions when referred to as “parents.” Language adaptation based on the audience is well-documented, yet large-scale studies of naturally-occurring audience effects are rare. To address this, we investigate audience and gender effects in the context of parenting, where gender plays a significant role. We focus on interactions within Reddit, particularly in the parenting Subreddits r/Daddit, r/Mommit, and r/Parenting, which cater to distinct audiences. By analyzing user posts using word embeddings, we measure similarities between user-tokens and word-tokens, also considering differences among high and low self-monitors. Results reveal that in mixed-gender contexts, mothers and fathers exhibit similar behavior in discussing a wide range of topics, while fathers emphasize more on educational and family advice. Single-gender Subreddits see more focused discussions. Mothers in r/Mommit discuss medical care, sleep, potty training, and food, distinguishing themselves. In terms of individual differences, we found that, especially on r/Parenting, high self-monitors tend to conform more to the norms of the Subreddit by discussing more of the topics associated with the Subreddit.</p

Mental health concerns precede quits: shifts in the work discourse during the Covid-19 pandemic and great resignation

Acknowledgements: We would like to thank Ken Benoit, Theresa Gessler, Frank Neffke, Max Pellert, Taha Yasseri and the other participants of the Complexity Science Hub Workshop on the Great Resignation for their feedback and discussions. We are also thankful to Mikołaj Biesaga for providing the code in Python to collect Reddit data and to Sebastian von Beck and Fariba Dorpoush for their work as Research Assistants. Finally, we would like to thank Joshua Becker, Marco Pangallo, and Ingo Weller for their feedback on the manuscript.Funder: JSMF FellowhipTo study the causes of the 2021 Great Resignation, we use text analysis and investigate the changes in work- and quit-related posts between 2018 and 2021 on Reddit. We find that the Reddit discourse evolution resembles the dynamics of the U.S. quit and layoff rates. Furthermore, when the COVID-19 pandemic started, conversations related to working from home, switching jobs, work-related distress, and mental health increased, while discussions on commuting or moving for a job decreased. We distinguish between general work-related and specific quit-related discourse changes using a difference-in-differences method. Our main finding is that mental health and work-related distress topics disproportionally increased among quit-related posts since the onset of the pandemic, likely contributing to the quits of the Great Resignation. Along with better labor market conditions, some relief came beginning-to-mid-2021 when these concerns decreased. Our study underscores the importance of having access to data from online forums, such as Reddit, to study emerging economic phenomena in real time, providing a valuable supplement to traditional labor market surveys and administrative data

Mental health concerns precede quits: shifts in the work discourse during the Covid-19 pandemic and great resignation.

Acknowledgements: We would like to thank Ken Benoit, Theresa Gessler, Frank Neffke, Max Pellert, Taha Yasseri and the other participants of the Complexity Science Hub Workshop on the Great Resignation for their feedback and discussions. We are also thankful to Mikołaj Biesaga for providing the code in Python to collect Reddit data and to Sebastian von Beck and Fariba Dorpoush for their work as Research Assistants. Finally, we would like to thank Joshua Becker, Marco Pangallo, and Ingo Weller for their feedback on the manuscript.Funder: JSMF FellowhipUNLABELLED: To study the causes of the 2021 Great Resignation, we use text analysis and investigate the changes in work- and quit-related posts between 2018 and 2021 on Reddit. We find that the Reddit discourse evolution resembles the dynamics of the U.S. quit and layoff rates. Furthermore, when the COVID-19 pandemic started, conversations related to working from home, switching jobs, work-related distress, and mental health increased, while discussions on commuting or moving for a job decreased. We distinguish between general work-related and specific quit-related discourse changes using a difference-in-differences method. Our main finding is that mental health and work-related distress topics disproportionally increased among quit-related posts since the onset of the pandemic, likely contributing to the quits of the Great Resignation. Along with better labor market conditions, some relief came beginning-to-mid-2021 when these concerns decreased. Our study underscores the importance of having access to data from online forums, such as Reddit, to study emerging economic phenomena in real time, providing a valuable supplement to traditional labor market surveys and administrative data. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1140/epjds/s13688-023-00417-2

Mental health concerns precede quits: shifts in the work discourse during the Covid-19 pandemic and great resignation

To study the causes of the 2021 Great Resignation, we use text analysis and investigate the changes in work- and quit-related posts between 2018 and 2021 on Reddit. We find that the Reddit discourse evolution resembles the dynamics of the U.S. quit and layoff rates. Furthermore, when the COVID-19 pandemic started, conversations related to working from home, switching jobs, work-related distress, and mental health increased, while discussions on commuting or moving for a job decreased. We distinguish between general work-related and specific quit-related discourse changes using a difference-in-differences method. Our main finding is that mental health and work-related distress topics disproportionally increased among quit-related posts since the onset of the pandemic, likely contributing to the quits of the Great Resignation. Along with better labor market conditions, some relief came beginning-to-mid-2021 when these concerns decreased. Our study underscores the importance of having access to data from online forums, such as Reddit, to study emerging economic phenomena in real time, providing a valuable supplement to traditional labor market surveys and administrative data.</p

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