Conversational Repairs on Reddit
Author Information
Author(s): A. Goddard, A. Gillespie
Primary Institution: London School of Economics
Hypothesis
How do Other-initiated repairs manifest in online asynchronous text-based interactions?
Conclusion
Conversational repairs are widespread on Reddit, but nearly half of the repair initiations go uncompleted.
Supporting Evidence
- 58.48% of interactions contained at least one repair initiation.
- 44.80% of repair initiations received no reply.
- Repair initiations were found in every subreddit analyzed.
- The likelihood of a repair initiation increases as the length of a comments thread progresses.
- More specific repair initiations were used more frequently than open requests.
Takeaway
When people talk on Reddit, they often try to fix misunderstandings, but many of these attempts don't get answered.
Methodology
The study analyzed 3,750 interactions from 25 subreddits, focusing on Other-initiated repairs through statistical methods including mixed effects modeling and survival analysis.
Potential Biases
Potential bias due to the reliance on publicly available data and the lack of informed consent from participants.
Limitations
The study does not formally examine each subreddit’s norms and interactional goals, and it focuses only on English-language subreddits.
Participant Demographics
The study focused on English-language Reddit users across various subreddits.
Statistical Information
P-Value
<0.001
Confidence Interval
CI = 0.90–0.92
Statistical Significance
p<0.001
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
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