{"id":12931,"date":"2016-05-26T09:55:07","date_gmt":"2016-05-26T14:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/%year%\/%monthnum%\/%day%\/how-the-2016-presidential-campaign-is-being-discussed-on-reddit\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T03:18:45","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T08:18:45","slug":"how-the-2016-presidential-campaign-is-being-discussed-on-reddit","status":"publish","type":"short-read","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2016\/05\/26\/how-the-2016-presidential-campaign-is-being-discussed-on-reddit\/","title":{"rendered":"How the 2016 presidential campaign is being discussed on Reddit"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n

News is a major part of Reddit, an online discussion forum that calls itself \u201cthe front page of the internet.\u201d The site has hosted Q&A sessions with newsmakers from President Obama to Amy Poehler, and it sends many of its millions of daily visitors to news sites and other publishers.<\/p>\n\n

Using data from a nationally representative survey and a content analysis of around 165 million Reddit comments, Pew Research Center looked at the role of news on the site<\/a> \u2013 and how Reddit users were discussing the presidential candidates in the lead-up to the primaries. Here are five key findings from the report:<\/p>\n\n

Just 4% of U.S. adults are Reddit users, but\u00a0seven-in-ten Reddit users say they get news on the site<\/strong>. Nearly half (45%) of Reddit users report learning something about the 2016 presidential campaign in a given week on the site, a share comparable to those of Facebook and Twitter users and higher than other social networking sites.<\/p>\n\n

Fully 47% of<\/strong>\u00a0Reddit news users consider themselves liberal<\/strong>, compared with just 24% of all U.S. adults. In addition, they are especially likely to be young (59% are 18-29 years old) and male (71%).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n\n

\"FT_16.02.24_reddit_candidates\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n

Overall, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was mentioned more frequently than any other candidate in May, June and September of 2015. Sanders was mentioned in about 165,000 comments<\/strong>, more than the number of mentions for the next two highest candidates combined<\/strong>: former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with about 85,000, and Donald Trump, with about 73,000. The\u00a0main Sanders discussion forum, or\u00a0subreddit, \/r\/SandersForPresident, offered not only discussion but opportunities to volunteer and raise funds for the candidate.<\/p>\n\n

Heavy commenting activity is concentrated among a minority of users. <\/strong>As we have found with other social networking sites, most users participate lightly, but heavy engagement is more common among a core group. Six-in-ten authors who posted at least one comment naming a candidate did so only <\/em>once, while a quarter left three or more comments. Similarly, our 2015 study<\/a> of local news habits found that less than one-fifth of commenters to Facebook pages run by news outlets left more than two comments. Another report<\/a> found that just 12% of Twitter users tweeted 100 times or more during a four-week period.<\/p>\n\n

Four-in-ten comments mentioning presidential candidates were left in non-political forums<\/strong> on Reddit such as r\/atheism, r\/LateShow, and r\/forwardsfromgrandma. Still, a majority of comments (60%) were found in explicitly political subreddits, whether dedicated to general discussion of politics, or to particular candidates, parties or ideologies. (For a guide to Reddit terminology, see our glossary<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Feb. 24, 2016, and updated on May 26, 2016, to reflect a revised weighting of the original data. For more details, see the report\u2019s\u00a0updated methodology<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We looked at the role of news on the site and how users were discussing the presidential candidates in the lead-up to the primaries. Here are 5 key findings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":331,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"sub_headline":"","sub_title":"","_prc_public_revisions":[],"_ppp_expiration_hours":0,"_ppp_enabled":false,"ai_generated_summary":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"apple_news_api_pending":"1713063739","relatedPosts":[],"datacite_doi":"","datacite_doi_citation":"","_prc_seo_qr_attachment_id":0,"spoken_article_player_enabled":true,"displayBylines":true,"footnotes":"","prc_watchers":[],"_prc_fork_parent":0,"_prc_fork_status":"","_prc_active_fork":0},"categories":[],"bylines":[961],"collection":[],"datasets":[],"_post_visibility":[],"formats":[467],"_fund_pool":[],"languages":[],"regions-countries":[515],"research-teams":[527],"workflow-status":[],"class_list":["post-12931","short-read","type-short-read","status-publish","hentry","bylines-michael-barthel","formats-short-read","regions-countries-united-states","research-teams-journalism"],"label":"Short Read","post_parent":0,"word_count":445,"canonical_url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2016\/05\/26\/how-the-2016-presidential-campaign-is-being-discussed-on-reddit\/","art_direction":{"A1":{"id":23964,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2016\/02\/PJ_2016.05.26_reddit_update-01.png","url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2016\/02\/PJ_2016.05.26_reddit_update-01.png?w=206&h=317&crop=1","width":206,"height":317,"chartArt":false},"A2":{"id":23964,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2016\/02\/PJ_2016.05.26_reddit_update-01.png","url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2016\/02\/PJ_2016.05.26_reddit_update-01.png?w=206&h=151&crop=1","width":206,"height":151,"chartArt":false},"A3":{"id":23964,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2016\/02\/PJ_2016.05.26_reddit_update-01.png","url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2016\/02\/PJ_2016.05.26_reddit_update-01.png?w=194&h=110&crop=1","width":194,"height":110,"chartArt":false},"A4":{"id":23964,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2016\/02\/PJ_2016.05.26_reddit_update-01.png","url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2016\/02\/PJ_2016.05.26_reddit_update-01.png?w=206&h=151&crop=1","width":206,"height":151,"chartArt":false},"XL":{"id":23964,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2016\/02\/PJ_2016.05.26_reddit_update-01.png","url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2016\/02\/PJ_2016.05.26_reddit_update-01.png?w=206&h=405&crop=1","width":206,"height":405,"chartArt":false},"social":{"id":23964,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2016\/02\/PJ_2016.05.26_reddit_update-01.png","url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2016\/02\/PJ_2016.05.26_reddit_update-01.png?w=206&h=590&crop=1","width":206,"height":590,"chartArt":false}},"_embeds":[],"watchers":[],"table_of_contents":[],"datacite_doi":"","prc_seo_data":{"title":"How the 2016 presidential campaign is being discussed on Reddit","description":"We looked at the role of news on the site and how users were discussing the presidential candidates in the lead-up to the primaries. Here are 5 key findings.","og_title":"How the 2016 presidential campaign is being discussed on Reddit","og_description":"We looked at the role of news on the site and how users were discussing the presidential candidates in the lead-up to the primaries. Here are 5 key findings.","schema_type":"Article","noindex":false,"canonical_url":"","primary_terms":[],"custom_schema":[],"og_image":23964,"indexnow_submitted_at":null,"gsc_index_status":null},"prepublish_checks":{},"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"relatedPostsOrdered":[],"bylinesOrdered":[{"key":"ccd64959-89c3-45d0-8053-e17b319aabd5","termId":961}],"acknowledgementsOrdered":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read\/12931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/short-read"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/331"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12931"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read\/12931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102950,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read\/12931\/revisions\/102950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12931"},{"taxonomy":"bylines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bylines?post=12931"},{"taxonomy":"collection","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection?post=12931"},{"taxonomy":"datasets","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/datasets?post=12931"},{"taxonomy":"_post_visibility","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_post_visibility?post=12931"},{"taxonomy":"formats","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/formats?post=12931"},{"taxonomy":"_fund_pool","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_fund_pool?post=12931"},{"taxonomy":"languages","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/languages?post=12931"},{"taxonomy":"regions-countries","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regions-countries?post=12931"},{"taxonomy":"research-teams","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-teams?post=12931"},{"taxonomy":"workflow-status","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/workflow-status?post=12931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}