From the stage to the audience: Propaganda on reddit

Abstract

Political discussions revolve around ideological conflicts that often split the audience into two opposing parties. Both parties try to win the argument by bringing forward information. However, often this information is misleading, and its dissemination employs propaganda techniques. In this work, we analyze the impact of propaganda on six major political forums on Reddit that target a diverse audience in two countries, the US and the UK. We focus on three research questions: i) who is posting propaganda? ii) how does propaganda differ across the political spectrum? and iii) how is propaganda received on political forums?.