Saturday, September 21, 2013

Social Media Platforms 101: Reddit

At the i2 User Conference we realized that people have started gaining a better appreciation for comprehensive societal knowledge. There is no website in the United States that can provide domestic cultural knowledge on a greater level than reddit.


What Is Reddit?


Reddit is a social media platform that allows redditors (users) to share content with one another. The structure and the language patterns of reddit are similar to that of a traditional online forum. Redditors customize their reddit experience by subscribing to subreddits (essentially subforums) about topics of interest. The content is shared on reddit as links and text (“self”) posts on subreddits, and redditors upvote and downvote content based upon their personal preferences. These votes influence what individual users see on their reddit front (feed/homepage).

What Can You Learn From Reddit?

Unlike more traditional social media sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn, reddit is not typically a site in which you learn about an individual user. Most redditors are anonymous and make it difficult to ascertain their true identity. Reddit is typically used more to share and identify online content. There are four major types of information redditors can access: breaking news, general cultural trends, topical knowledge, and subculture familiarity.

Many times, we have identified breaking events on reddit before they hit major news outlets, which allowed us to have better situational awareness than if we had relied on traditional news media. Reddit also provides us with an abundance of cultural memes on the Internet; this allows our investigators and analysts to more accurately discern the meaning of social media posts made by persons of interest.


One of the best things about reddit is that there is a subreddit for almost anything, which allows us to learn about almost any topic or subculture of interest. Want to know more about or ask questions to law enforcement officers? Subscribe to ProtectAndServe. Interested in video footage of combat? Check out CombatFootage. Need to know more about marijuana users and production? Visit Trees (not to be confused with MarijuanaEnthusiasts which is actually about trees). There is very little limit to what you can learn from reddit.

How Can You Use Information Found on Reddit?

Fundamentally, reddit makes you a better investigator by providing you with the general cultural knowledge you need to complete almost any task. No matter who or what the subject is at hand, you can learn more about it. Often, subreddits will even identify external websites associated with the content found in the subreddit. From learning about a person of interest’s subcultural groups and language patterns to keeping up with changes in information technology, reddit can provide a great starting point for your research.

About CES PRISM Blog

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The CES PRISM blog is the place where CES shares the newest developments in social media sites and tools, data analytics, eDiscovery, investigations, and intelligence. We will also share workflow tips and tricks, case studies, and the developmental progress of our open source social media research and analysis tool, PRISM. Our goal is to open a dialogue with the community which allows all of us to learn together.