https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/2j5dze/is_reddit_considered_social_media/
created by Raichu4u on 13/10/2014 at 20:33 UTC
58 upvotes, 15 top-level comments (showing 15)
This has been something bugging me for a while, obviously Reddit isn't too comparable to other sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Wikipedia defines social media as:
"...the social interaction among people in which they create, share or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks."
Which sounds like Reddit fits this category. But then you go onto their next definition.
"A group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content."
Reddit isn't exactly exclusively a collection of user taken selfies or statements of how a person's day went. Reddit is a bunch of things. Which leads me to wonder, what the hell is Reddit? It isn't exactly blogging, and it isn't exactly social media, as there's a higher emphasis here on the community, not the individual.
Comment by coveritwithgas at 13/10/2014 at 20:53 UTC
43 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I think it's square in the middle of what everyone refers to as social media. When the reddit icon shows up in the "share this" dropdown, that puts it solidly in the social media camp. I think your objection is that people post links to things they didn't create, is that right? I don't think this invalidates reddit as social media -- the other site, say, the LA Times, isn't running the show. Even if they have their people submitting all of their articles to reddit, they can't guarantee that they're all going to do well, or that they'll have 25% of the screen space of anyone accessing reddit from LA.
Comment by alexleavitt at 14/10/2014 at 03:59 UTC
17 upvotes, 1 direct replies
As an academic who had published peer-reviewed research about Reddit, I have used the umbrella term "social media" in relation to Reddit, but I usually prefer to call it a "social news site" along the same lines that others use "social network site" for things like Facebook.
Comment by IwillBeDamned at 14/10/2014 at 04:00 UTC
7 upvotes, 0 direct replies
my perspective is based on an internet previous to buzzwords like "social media" and "meme" how they're used now, but i consider reddit to be an internet forum more than anything.
my argument why that's a valid point would be how the majority of content (if posts and replies are considered equal) are simply text, image or gif link responses. you can find a forum on reddit for so many topics that rivals a leading site for the same topic, and the community hear is usually more in tune with contemporary or current developments. take music website forums for example (i mean music playing, not listening)
based on your post, sure i think perhaps reddit can be pinned as social media, but is also much more than that like you say.
Comment by brainburger at 14/10/2014 at 02:18 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
It only needs to meet one of the definition to qualify. I generally refer to reddit is a social bookmarking site, which is a term I saw applied to del.icio.us
Comment by coloicito at 14/10/2014 at 11:57 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I just took a marketing course, and reddit was listed under content aggregators rather than social Media.
Comment by kickstand at 14/10/2014 at 16:04 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I'd say it's pretty clearly yes in both senses. The user-generated content are links and self-posts.
Comment by Daniel-H at 14/10/2014 at 01:43 UTC
7 upvotes, 3 direct replies
To me, Reddit is the hub of the internet. News, jokes, discussion, it's all here. Whether the content is created on Reddit, created by a Redditor and then shared on Reddit, or created by a third-party and shared on Reddit.
It's a community that encompasses, in one site, what the internet encompasses, sorted in a more orderly fashion, and cleaned up (in that not everything on the internet is shared here).
Other sites you mentioned are geared towards specific things, but Reddit is geared towards content (be it a joke, story, meme, link to whatever, question, or someone simply talking) and then discussion of that content.
Is it social media? Yes. Is it a news site? Yes. Is it a forum? Yes. It's everything you want it to be and a lot more.
Comment by [deleted] at 14/10/2014 at 02:26 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I think of it as social media, as it's for many-to-many communication.
Comment by [deleted] at 14/10/2014 at 11:47 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
To me, social media has to have an element of familiarity or identification with the people that you engage with, such as on Facebook or Twitter. Reddit is largely anonymous. People often use throwaway accounts so that they won't be identified by those that they know personally. There are so many people on this website that almost no two people that reply to anyone's comments will be the same. I very rarely ever keep seeing the same usernames showing up, aside from on smaller subreddits and the more "popular" Redditors.
Maybe I'm out of touch and my view of what social media is isn't what it's generally accepted to be, but those are my views anyway.
Comment by stacecom at 14/10/2014 at 16:57 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
We have usernames. We have "friends" lists. We have private messaging. We have targeted groups.
We're totally social media.
Wikipedia's definition of social media (the second one) means Facebook isn't social media either.
Comment by BunchOAtoms at 14/10/2014 at 18:34 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Reddit, in general, likes to think it is not social media, since many redditors seem to be decidedly anti-social media. However, Reddit has a lot of aspects reminiscent of social media. I consider it to be a social media site. You can call Twitter a micro-blogging site all you want, but that doesn't mean it's not a social media site.
Comment by [deleted] at 14/10/2014 at 03:39 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
It depends whose strict definition you want to use. The second quote you have from Wikipedia is from Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), who also define UGC (User-Generated Content) according to the OECD's definition:
“First, it needs to be published either on a publicly accessible website or on a social networking site accessible to a selected group of people; second, it needs to show a certain amount of creative effort; and finally, it needs to have been created outside of professional routines and practices” (2010: 61)
So a lot of the content here falls outside of that, but nowadays the same can be said for Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.
The more general notion of a 'Web 2.0' ethic is certainly fulfilled by Reddit. One of the ways I like to think about it is to imagine what would be left of the platform if you removed the community. Like Facebook, a userless Reddit would be an empty shell.
The web is also characterised by innovation, I think it's fair to say, which is why this or that site doesn't fit neatly into pre-existing categories or genres: because it's something new and different - hybrid, yes, but also genuinely new in some ways.
Comment by DandyTheLion at 14/10/2014 at 16:04 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
If you can make personal enemies of people and hate them forever, then yes.
Comment by workitloud at 14/10/2014 at 05:45 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I would venture to say that reddit is a higher form of social media, as Wikipedia is a higher form of reference. Taking into account the proverbial anonymity, and a real intolerance for pilfered links, calling out those you don't know over grammatical errors, punctuation, etc, it acts as a real dialogue-building celebration of knowledge and wit. Pretty phenomenal, really. As Jon Stewart has rebuilt Journalism from the ashes, reddit has forced issues to the forefront that would ordinarily get buried. I knew something was afoot a couple of years ago, when I saw reddit cited as source in a "real" news story. Now they don't credit it, but I'm certain they are trolling for the stories here, as it's the equivalent of the ticker tape for news, as I see it, in real time.
Comment by [deleted] at 14/10/2014 at 20:22 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I'd say the best term for sites like reddit and 4chan would be a "meta-forum". That is it is a collection of individual independently-themed forums strung together. I'm going to say that these can be related to established forms of social media enough to be included.
To separate a "meta-forum" for just a large set of forums I'd make the distinction that the there is no overarching theme. There is no "theme" to reddit aside from a collective community. Take for example that /r/explainlikeimfive is about explaining topics in a simple manner where as /r/aww is about pictures of adorable animals.
Now that I've defined a meta-forum, let's look at social media. In general, we can see some similar functions:
Reddit fulfills all these criteria. Profiles are the biggest difference but Reddit is essentially a Facebook of themed group pages so I consider it fulfilled. Discussion takes place in subreddits and PMs. Rating is done in the form of upvotes and downvotes. Sharing is a little more ambiguous but you have x-posting which fulfills this criteria.
I don't believe social media to be necessarily limited to the criteria above. I was using it for the sake of argument. Social media is likely to be too broad of a term for such a rigid definition. It is more of an umbrella term for such "user networks" as Facebook and Twitter, which could probably be used to encompass meta-forums as well.