Table of Links
Abstract and 1. Introduction
2. Related Work
3. Methodology
4. Results
5. Discussion
6. Conclusion, References, and Appendix
ABSTRACT
r/antiwork is a Reddit community that focuses on the discussion of worker exploitation, labour rights and related left-wing political ideas (e.g. universal basic income). In late 2021, r/antiwork became the fastest growing community on Reddit, coinciding with what the mainstream media began referring to as the Great Resignation. This same media coverage was attributed with popularising the subreddit and, therefore, accelerating its growth. In this article, we explore how the r/antiwork community was affected by the exponential increase in subscribers and the media coverage that chronicled its rise. We investigate how subreddit activity changed over time, the behaviour of heavy and light users, and how the topical nature of the discourse evolved with the influx of new subscribers. We report that, despite the continuing rise of subscribers well into 2022, activity on the subreddit collapsed after January 25th 2022, when a moderator’s Fox news interview was widely criticised. While many users never commented again, longer running trends of users’ posting and commenting behaviour did not change. Finally, while many users expressed their discontent at the changing nature of the subreddit as it became more popular, we found no evidence of major shifts in the topical content of discussion over the period studied, with the exception of the introduction of topics related to seasonal events (e.g. holidays, such as Thanksgiving) and ongoing developments in the news (e.g. working from home and the curtailing of reproductive rights in the United States).
1 INTRODUCTION
In 2021, the attrition rate of employees in the global workforce reached record highs in an economic trend that became known as the Great Resignation[1]. The COVID-19 pandemic had caused many workers to leave the labour force because of problems related to child and social care arrangements, early retirement and even death [10]. The resulting labour shortages led to wage growth, encouraging workers to quit their jobs and seek opportunities elsewhere [25]. More broadly, the trauma inflicted by the pandemic led many to question their relationship with work and to demand better working conditions [28, 29]. The Great Resignation was widely reported on in the mainstream media, with coverage often linking to social media, e.g. “Man Quits His Job With Epic ’Have a Good Life’ Text and People Are Impressed” [2], “Quitting Your Job Never Looked So Fun” [3] and “Scroll through TikTok to see the real stars of the workplace” [4]. Indeed, media articles often presented the growing popularity of r/antiwork[5], a Reddit community, as emblematic of the significance of the Great Resignation[6] (see Figure 1).
r/antiwork is a subreddit created to discuss worker exploitation, labour rights and the antiwork movement, irreverently encapsulated by the subreddit’s slogan of “Unemployment for all, not just the rich!”. Throughout the pandemic, r/antiwork enjoyed continuous subscriber growth, increasing from 80,000 members at the start of 2020 to over 200,000 in less than a year. However, after becoming the subject of mainstream media coverage in mid-October 2021, the number of subscribers increased by over 330,000 within a two week period – an increase of 57% – making it the fastest growing subreddit at the time (see grey region from Figure 1). Interactions with the media continued to shape r/antiwork: Doreen Ford, a longtime moderator of the subreddit, was interviewed by Fox News on January 25 2022. The interview was controversial, resulting in the subreddit briefly going private, many members unsubscribing and a reduction in the rate of subscriber growth throughout 2022. Numerous redditors observed that there exists a tension between the moderators, who tend to hold more radical political views, and
newer members of the subreddit who are more concerned with organised labour and reforming the current economic system[7]. Indeed, there are numerous posts from long-term members lamenting how the subreddit has changed over time, from discussing how “society would/could function without unnecessary labor” to users “posting real and fake text messages of quitting their job” [8].
Reddit has been the subject of numerous studies on social media behaviour. These studies have shown that large numbers of new users can be disruptive to an online community [20]. They can impact communication norms [15] and behave in ways that are harmful to the community [21]. However, even in extreme cases, like when a subreddit gets defaulted (made a default subreddit for newly registered Reddit accounts), the community can still remain high-quality and retain its core character [23]. Other studies have highlighted how the mainstream media can influence social media and the general public. For example, public attention of COVID-19 on Reddit was mainly driven by media coverage [11] and negative media articles led to numerous hateful subreddits being banned by Reddit, including r/TheFappening, r/CoonTown and r/jailbait. Media coverage has also been shown to have negative consequences on social media: it can increase problematic online behaviour [13] and banning subreddits has increased hate speech elsewhere on Reddit [18]. To our knowledge, however, there are no studies where a subreddit’s rapid rise was so intertwined with media coverage and, moreover, where a media event was the catalyst in its decline. Furthermore, we are unaware of any other studies specifically related to r/antiwork.
To understand how r/antiwork was impacted by media events, we performed a quantitative analysis of over 300,000 posts and 12 million comments from January 2019 to July 2022. We performed a time series analysis of users posting and commenting behaviour, and investigated how user activity on r/antiwork was affected by the initial media articles in October 2021 and the Fox News interview in January 2022. Next, we categorised users as light and heavy users to understand how different types of user contribute to the subreddit. Lastly, we used topic modelling to understand whether the influx of new users had changed the discourse on r/antiwork, e.g. focusing more on the topic of quitting their jobs rather than more serious topics related to the antiwork movement. In summary, we ask the following research questions:
• RQ1 Subreddit Activity: How did subreddit activity change after the increase in subscribers that coincided with coverage in the mainstream media?
• RQ2 User Types: How was the posting and commenting behaviour of heavy and light users impacted by the growth in subscribers?
• RQ3 Content Analysis: Did the influx of new users change the discourse in terms of the distribution of topics discussed?
In the remainder of this paper, we will answer these research questions and discuss how our results relate to existing work on social media analysis.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-10/quit-your-job-how-toresign-after-covid-pandemic
[2] https://www.newsweek.com/1639419
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/29/style/quit-your-job.html
[4] https://www.ft.com/content/c7f8fb0e-8f1a-4829-b818-cb9fe90352fa
[5] https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/
[6] https://www.ft.com/content/1270ee18-3ee0-4939-98a8-c4f40940e644
[7] https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/sdesxw/comment/huc9wf9/
[8] https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/qfi56h/
